CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages

(Note from Anthony – English is not Frank’s primary language, I have made some small adjustments for readability, however they may be a few passages that need clarification. Frank will be happy to clarify in comments)

It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?

At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.

But this is the climate debate, so massive rescue missions have been launched to save the CO2-hypothesis. So explanation for the unfortunate CO2 data is as follows:

First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.

Very unlike solar theory and all other theories, when it comes to CO2-theory one has to PROVE that it is wrong. So let’s do some digging. The 4-5 major temperature peaks seen on Fig 1. have common properties: First a big rapid temperature increase, and then an almost just as big, but a less rapid temperature fall. To avoid too much noise in data, I summed up all these major temperature peaks into one graph:

Fig 2. This graph of actual data from all major temperature peaks of the Antarctic vostokdata confirms the pattern we saw in fig 1, and now we have a very clear signal as random noise is reduced.

The well known Temperature-CO2 relation with temperature as a driver of CO2 is easily shown:

Fig 3.

Below is a graph where I aim to illustrate CO2 as the driver of temperature:

Fig 4. Except for the well known fact that temperature changes precede CO2 changes, the supposed CO2-driven raise of temperatures works ok before temperature reaches max peak. No, the real problems for the CO2-rescue hypothesis appears when temperature drops again. During almost the entire temperature fall, CO2 only drops slightly. In fact, CO2 stays in the area of maximum CO2 warming effect. So we have temperatures falling all the way down even though CO2 concentrations in these concentrations where supposed to be a very strong upwards driver of temperature.

I write “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect “…

The whole point with CO2 as the important main temperature driver was, that already at small levels of CO2 rise, this should efficiently force temperatures up, see for example around -6 thousand years before present. Already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 should cause the warming. If no such CO2 effect already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 cannot be considered the cause of these temperature rises.

So when CO2 concentration is in the area of 250-280 ppm, this should certainly be considered “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect”.

The problems can also be illustrated by comparing situations of equal CO2 concentrations:

Fig 5.

So, for the exact same levels of CO2, it seems we have very different level and trend of temperatures:

Fig 6.

How come a CO2 level of 253 ppm in the B-situation does not lead to rise in temperatures? Even from very low levels? When 253 ppm in the A situation manages to raise temperatures very fast even from a much higher level?

One thing is for sure:

“Other factors than CO2 easily overrules any forcing from CO2. Only this way can the B-situations with high CO2 lead to falling temperatures.”

This is essential, because, the whole idea of placing CO2 in a central role for driving temperatures was: “We cannot explain the big changes in temperature with anything else than CO2”.

But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.

– Another thing: When examining the graph fig 1, I have not found a single situation where a significant raise of CO2 is accompanied by significant temperature rise- WHEN NOT PRECEDED BY TEMPERATURE RISE. If the CO2 had any effect, I should certainly also work without a preceding temperature rise?! (To check out the graph on fig 1. it is very helpful to magnify)

Does this prove that CO2 does not have any temperature effect at all?

No. For some reason the temperature falls are not as fast as the temperature rises. So although CO2 certainly does not dominate temperature trends then: Could it be that the higher CO2 concentrations actually is lowering the pace of the temperature falls?

This is of course rather hypothetical as many factors have not been considered.

Fig 7.

Well, if CO2 should be reason to such “temperature-fall-slowing-effect”, how big could this effect be? The temperatures falls 1 K / 1000 years slower than they rise.

However, this CO2 explanation of slow falling temperature seems is not supported by the differences in cooling periods, see fig 8.

When CO2 does not cause these big temperature changes, then what is then the reason for the big temperature changes seen in Vostok data? Or: “What is the mechanism behind ice ages???”

This is a question many alarmists asks, and if you can’t answer, then CO2 is the main temperature driver. End of discussion. There are obviously many factors not yet known, so I will just illustrate one hypothetical solution to the mechanism of ice ages among many:

First of all: When a few decades of low sunspot number is accompanied by Dalton minimum and 50 years of missing sunspots is accompanied by the Maunder minimum, what can for example thousands of years of missing sunspots accomplish? We don’t know.

What we saw in the Maunder minimum is NOT all that missing solar activity can achieve, even though some might think so. In a few decades of solar cooling, only the upper layers of the oceans will be affected. But if the cooling goes on for thousands of years, then the whole oceans will become colder and colder. It takes around 1000-1500 years to “mix” and cool the oceans. So for each 1000-1500 years the cooling will take place from a generally colder ocean. Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.

It seems that a longer warming period of the earth would result in a slower cooling period afterward due to accumulated heat in ocean and more:

Fig 8.

Again, this fits very well with Vostok data: Longer periods of warmth seems to be accompanied by longer time needed for cooling of earth. The differences in cooling periods does not support that it is CO2 that slows cooling phases. The dive after 230.000 ybp peak shows, that cooling CAN be rapid, and the overall picture is that the cooling rates are governed by the accumulated heat in oceans and more.

Note: In this writing I have used Vostok data as valid data. I believe that Vostok data can be used for qualitative studies of CO2 rising and falling. However, the levels and variability of CO2 in the Vostok data I find to be faulty as explained here:

Very nice work, Frank. Isn’t it amazing what can be extracted from data when one doesn’t go into an analysis with preconceived ideas. One wonders why climate scientists haven’t attempted this kind of analysis.

Oh wait, they probably did based on computer models and it showed temps following Co2. ;-)

I’m having difficulty understanding the relationship of CO2 and temp in Fig 2. You start out saying that CO2 lags temp but it seems to me that Fig 2 shows just the reverse – CO2 leading temp. What am I missing?

The Vostok cores and subsequent papers coming from that important work provide a much needed interpretation of the long term climate. They are so much more valuable and relevant than the various Hansen, Mann, and other IPCC models that are based on a relatively small data set. They provide a picture back in climate time that the AGWers would rather not have come to the attention of the general public and their politicians.

Frank Lansner’s post provides a concise interpretation of the Vostok data and valuable weapon in the fight against climate ignorance. It’s the type of thing AGWers would rather ignore than confront. This time around, I’d like to see the AGW supporters address the substance of the posted message rather than pick at the messenger.

This seems a pretty significant piece of analysis with major potential consequences: It is simple and very elegant. Surely someone has taken a similar approach to Frank’s before now? I would be interested in references to similar pieces of analysis using the same data.

Thank you Frank for your clear representation here, and that of 12/17. It is too bad the climate ‘scientists’ cannot do the same to illustrate their argument pro CO2. Hand-waving, desperate theories and climate models fail in light of data.
Congradulations, Anthony on your fine blog.

Bernie (09:04:30) : “Surely someone has taken a similar approach to Frank’s before now? I would be interested in references to similar pieces . . .”

Yes, Bernie. Quite a bit of work has been done. The understanding that CO2 lags temperature has been around since soon after the first Vostok papers entered the literature. A search of Nature, Geophysical Letters, and elsewhere will reveal similar conclusions. If you have trouble with your search, I can provide a number of papers for your review.

That Frank’s take has been posted here underscores the immense value of Anthony’s blog. It’s kind of like a Hawaiian volcano where the hot magma of science oozes to the surface for all to see and admire. Occasionally, we get a pyroclastic event like we’ve seen this week.

Is it possible to generate an estimated CO2 forcing factor from the “temperature-fall-slowing-effect” alone?

Some time back I read an alarmist analysis of Vostok that said the changes in slope of the temperature curve as the temperature reached peak levels proves the effect of CO2–i.e., if you picked just the right corresponding spots on the curves you could pretend that a forcing factor of 3+W/m2 was in effect throughout. The fact of the emergence of the temperature peak while CO2 was reduced and temperature’s subsequent decline in the face of increased CO2 would suggest to the less devoted that CO2 was a passenger rather than the driver. But for those willing to overlook hard enough, there is AGW confirmation everywhwere.

Lately, I was under the impression that the high church alarmists were backing away from trying to spin the Vostok data, instead arguing that the current levels of CO2 are (a) so much higher and (b) accumulated so much faster that the Vostok patterns are somehow no longer relevant. The new thinking is that current conditions are unique, therefore it is OK to cherry-pick historical comparisons and project novel climate outcomes. Then again, just about any interpretation is ultimately “consistent with” AGW so I should probably not fret about whether such things are au currant and orthodox.

Based on this very interesting paper, I guess the question of interest to our moderator and others is this:

Although this data appears to show that carbon dioxide doesn’t DRIVE temperature RISES, is there any reason to suppose that, having elevated carbon dioxide levels via human activity, will there be any effect on any subsequent COOLING in the next century or so?

The data you present would imply NOT for <300ppm of carbon dioxide.

Is there any reason to suppose that, say, 500ppm+ might have a different effect?

Questions of interest, not criticism of your very interesting paper……..

Many things in this post are merely asserted and unproven. Others, simply ignored. Allegedly, CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, but in Fig.2 we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks. This is also problematic:

The differences in cooling periods does not support that it is CO2 that slows cooling phases. The dive after 230.000 ybp peak shows, that cooling CAN be rapid

No one argues that it can’t. The argument is that it slows the curve in the back end. And in every curve drawn in fig 8, the back end curve is in fact slower than the climbing period.

Notwithstanding, I generally agree with the fact that the Vostok graph is a very weak evidence for AGW. But I also don’t see it as evidence against it.

I have posted here before about Ernst Beck. Frank has had his disagreement with him but seems to think he has some valid points (see the link at the very end of Franks post.

Personally I think the ice core co2 levels are contradictory. If they show a constant 280ppm what has been the driver for the numerous periods of warmth and cold the earth has experienced- many captured on instrumental records?

I originally joined this forum by posting a number of graphs showing the measurements of becks data against the actual temperatures from Hadley CET back to 1660. This appeared to show that co2 could only have something to do with temperature changes if there were similar levels of co2 to today in our recent past, which Becks data appears to show.

http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck … hadley.jpg
The graph is repeated above-the blue line is man made co2 since 1750. The green dots are Becks data. THe red line hadley CET to 1660-unadjusted or smoothed. Most of the action related to co2 -according to the readings-seems to occur between 270 and 350ppm.

Some people believe that 90% of co2 has a life of around 50 years and the remaining 10% stays around for much longer. Other people estimate around 5 years to several hundred (the IPCC) with Susan Solomons apparently believing it is there for 10,000 years. This ‘decomposition’ is not shown on the graph as it would be impossible tro represent it accurately on this scale.

As I say, Frank Lansner has had his disagreements with Ernst Beck in the past but essentially there appear to be a large number of contradictions if we accept co2 at a constant 280ppm. Either the ice cores are wrong, Mauna Loa readings are wrong or co2 is not the major driver it is believed to be.

If you have migrated to this thread I apologise for not replying to your post on this subject on another thread which I have only just seen-the threads are moving so fast it is sometimes difficult to keep track of comments.

Excellent. It is exactly this analysis that made me a skeptic when I was teaching Global Warming to my students.

The alarmist have always dismissed the lag period (and RealClimate deleted posts when it is brought up) by accepting the initial warming is due to such things as solar but then they suggest the remaining rise in temperature is due to feedback by increased CO2 that keeps temperatures rising.

As you point out that logic only makes sense when the temperatures are rising. When the temperatures are falling however the exact same amount of CO2 can not stop the plunge towards a new glacial period. The warming due to CO2 is either overwhelmed by other forces or the effects of CO2 are negligible. Either way clearly something more powerful than CO2 is driving climate change.

Thank you Frank and Anthony, this is very timely as I have just been looking for graphics that show the time lag. There are a good view papers that estimate it at 600-800 years – but the graph of original data doesn’t show it very clearly, except for one of the peaks, obviously because of the long timeline of hundreds of thousands of years. Mr Gore was able to use this graph in his film without drawing attention to the fine gap and its implications!

I guess Leif will have something to say about the possibility of much longer spotless sun periods – but these should show up in the be-10 profiles and I am not sure they do. Perhaps others could look at this too.

We in the UK already had a harbinger of colder times – a lovely Snowy Owl from Iceland or Greenland in Cornwall for a long stay, but we have also just received a visit from an Ivory Gull in the Hebrides. And another Arctic high pressure system is developing! If someone tells me how, I will send a photo of the owl!

The fact that CO2 peaks at the same time as temperature is entirely consistent with temperature being a driver. There is no consistency there, give it some thought.

As far as “Many things in this post are merely asserted and unproven. Others, simply ignored.” – of the only two points you bring up, only the second has any merit…

I think this is a valid and elegantly simple argument against CO2 as a driver – at least on the upswing. I do agree that higher concentration could have greater effect (although with logarithmic importance seemingly proven elsewhere), and that we have no indication from this work that CO2 does not slow the cooling process.

This is a lovely bit of analysis that takes advantage of some mathematical
properties and some human properties.

First human trick: Switch to an absolute temperature scale
Second human trick: Years are a human construction. If there is a signal
independent of human activity, setting the peak points of the signal as
zero points is valid idea. (No humans were around in the past to change
CO2 concentrations, so this is valid). This is basically the same trick as
describing a circle as having pi radians instead of 360 degrees.
The notion of 360 degrees is an arbitrary human assignment.

The mathematics here end up being a lovely non-Cartesian,
non-Euclidean sinusoidal geometry. You can take advantage of commutativity and associativity of the data, and the graph falls right out
of the data. The asymmetry of the data when plotted on a sinusoidal
geometry is EXACTLY consistent with elliptical orbits. If you apply
Kepler’s laws and Occam’s Razor, variations in CO2 here on earth
are associated with the sun’s orbit in the galaxy.

Oh, and it looks like we all better move to warmer parts of the earth.

Much depends on the curve at which CO2 level generates greenhouse effect. “Pushing on a spring” is a good analogy for rising CO2 because as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance — and at some point the spring is fully compressed and more force will not move it. We say there is a “logarithmic” response of CO2 and greenhouse effect. At some point, more CO2 will have little further effect because the it has reached a saturation point.

How much argument is there on this saturation level? We certainly hear little to nothing about it in the MSMM (mainstream moron media). I want to know more. How were current models of this saturation effect derived? Are they mathematical, or is there some way to actually measure the slope of the “dose-response” curve?

On what basis does the author of this piece conclude that maximum warming effect of CO2 occurs @ 250-280ppm? Is it a guess based on his graph? If maximum warming effect is in this range, the entire argument of AGW as it relates to CO2 is moot if we are long past the maximum warming effect.

I don’t see how Fig.2 necessarily shows temperature leading CO2. The arbitrary scales on the Y axes could be changed to show CO2 leading temperature, i.e. I could pick a left hand Y-axis scale to just move the red line up. The derivative of the data would be a more useful thing to graph.

If anyone gets the opportunity to read some of the fascinating science on this subject, it’s worth exploring the relationship between ice core temperature proxies and CO2 levels in more detail.

For example, while it seems quite well established that the CO2 rise in the Vostock core lags the temperature rise by 800 (+/- quite a bit) years, the evidence indicates that the CO2 rise leads the warming in the tropics and certainly in Greenland (Greenland cores have quite high temporal resolution but don’t go back as far as Antarctic ones):

Of course the ice age cycles are driven by the slow, slow, slow variations in the orbital properties of the Earth (Milankovitch cycles). Deglaciation is likely driven by enhanced Spring insolation in the deep Southern hemisphere which results in very slow warming, and as the Southern Ocean ice melts and the oceans start to warm, CO2 is released (thus the lag represented in the Vostock cores). The enhanced CO2 effectively enhances and transmits the deep Southern warming to the Northern latitudes. Thus the temperature rise in Greenland cores follows the Milankovitch-induced rise in CO2 that lags warming in the Antarctic cores…

Notwithstanding, I generally agree with the fact that the Vostok graph is a very weak evidence for AGW. But I also don’t see it as evidence against it.
——-

I’m trying to recall… This temp/CO2 graph was pretty much the only evidence Al Gore used to argue his AGW point in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. I don’t recall any other evidence in his video that helped start this whole thing into motion. I suppose that computer models are the only other sources of evidence available.

Great, great work. The Vostock ice core graph tells us 2 things very clearly. 1. The normal case is the climate is and allway will be changeing. 2. Over the last 500’000 years there where only 10’000 years (2%) what Al Gore says the climate should be!
Regards from the cold snowy Swiss mountains. Freddie

Great post.
Timing of Ice ages is driven by the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles are related to the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt. Cycles range from 20,000 to 100,000 years. i.e. nothing to do with CO2.
Regards,

In any case, the earth will cool down and go through a glaciation period and looking at the graphs it is nothing to get nervous about. As the graphs clearly show, it will take many thousands of years to get there. To think that humanity won’t have better technologies to deal with this is simply stupid and lacks vision. Surely even in a few hundreds of years we will have technology in place to regulate (cool or warm up) the earth’s climate. The sun will not just go away!!! We could even have technology then to melt the advancing glaciers (Microwave walls or something!). For certain, humanity will have better food production systems. In any case, as the last graph shows, heating up the ocean will slow down the rate and give more time. But certainly, it will take a long time. So, it might not be a bad idea to keep the oceans warm…

The people who have the raw data from these ice cores, say the correlation coefficient is highest when the temperature data is delayed 800 years; and this is the origin of the statement that the temperature leads the CO2 by 800 years.

But this isn’t the whole story. If you look carefully at the graphs above you will see two things that are omitted from this simple picture.

1/ The rising edges are close together than the falling edges. So a separate correlation of rising data and falling data (major excursions) would show that the rising edges correlate better at less than 800 years delar, while the falling edges correlate better at more than 800 years delay.

2/ On the rising edges, the CO2 edge is about the same steepness as the temperature edge; but on the falling edges, the CO2 fall timing is much slower than the temperature fall timing.

Note that the amplitude of the CO2 changes (in this data) is about 150 ppm, which is of the same order as the present rising CO2 data from Mauna Loa; but the temperature changes are about 8 deg C, which is considreably more temperature change than occurred during the Mediaeval warm period; which just happens to be 800 years before the present Mauna Loa CO2 rise.

But we should not lose sight of the fact that the reconstructed history of the temperature during the MWP is a global mean.

There is NOTHING at all global about these Vostok Ice Cores. The entombed temperature record is a record of temperatures at the coldest known place on earth, which can get doen to -90 C, and where temperature excursions of tens of degrees C are common.

At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

So one lesson we should learn from all of this, is that Vostok Station is not at all representative of global climate, and we shouldn’t be using these data to imply any global behavior.

Another consequence of the extreme low temperatures at Vostok, and the consequent virtual absence of water in the atmosphere, is that CO2 (and ozone) are the only GHGs of any consequence in that atmosphere, in which case, the effect of CO2 is exaggerated compared to global typical atmospheres where much of the IR spectrum that CO2 can absorb, is already absorbed by water vapor.

No matter how they try to argue it, any possible kind of (physical) amplification has to be delayed by the propagation delay of the amplification process. No physical causal relationship, can have a negative propagation delay; the output of the process, always has to follow the input to that process, otherwise we would have what Analog engineers describe as the “guesser circuit”

So the notion that a CO2 triggered temperature excursion (either up or down), can then sudeenly switch and have the CO2 take over as driver, is sheer nonsense.

And if such processes were possible; in the global sense, who needs the CO2, because water vapor by itself is perfectly capable of starting a temperature excursion, without any coaxing from CO2.

The argument that feedback either from ocean outgassing of CO2 or evaporation of water enhances CO2 induced warming; is tantamount to grabbing hold of the branch of a tree, while you and the tree are falling down a cliff.

In my view, the incontrovertible delay of the Vostok CO2 response to the local temperature changes, is a fatal blow to the claim of CO2 caused global climate change.

And no; I do not claim that CO2 does not intercept earth surface thermal radiation, and warm the surface and the atmosphere (at all). The Physics is very real; but if you don’t properly allow for the evaporative response to surface warming, and the negative feedback due to clouds, then you cannot claim to be modeling this planet on which we live.

Hi: very interesting. Could anyone look at this data and make an argument that CO2 is still driving temperature? In other words, what would a global warming alarmist argue after looking at these graphs?

Jim Steele’s post notes that in the Vostok data, when CO2 levels are high, temperature plunges still occur, which suggests strongly that CO2 isn’t an important driver of warming (it can’t keep the planet warm when other factors are at work).

We see the same process over tens of millions of years in the excellent graph, entitled “Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time,” at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html. It is based on R.A. Berner’s CO2 estimates and C.R. Scotese’s estimates of temperature.

In this graph, over the past 120 million years or so, temperatures remain high while CO2 steadily plunges. Clearly, both in the Vostok cores of the past 500,000 years and over much longer periods of time, the relationship of CO2 and temperature is tenuous. Why the AGWers are incapable of seeing this is a mystery.

I find it very interesting that the CO2 rises around 5500 to 7500 years after temperature peak. Is there any explanation for this?

Slightly OT, but still in the arena of GW, California snowpack’s second measurement results are in, and we have only 61 percent of “normal,” with little expectation of more snow this late in the season. This is being blamed on AGW, of course. The consequences are severe, as agriculture will receive far less water than normal, perhaps 15 percent of the usual amount. The state allocates water to users in California. Farmers will cease many operations, and the adverse economic impact to the state will be quite large.

A secondary impact, not often mentioned, is that formerly-irrigated land will become dry and dusty, creating large dust clouds as the wind whips across the land. Whether this have a measureable impact on global temperatures is way beyond my small skills.

A further impact is that it is a bit difficult to grow crops for bio-fuels when there is no water for irrigation. It appears California will be importing up to 10 percent of its gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to meet the state-mandated bio-fuel percentage.

This is not what the state needs, a reduction in tax revenue from a significant part of the economy, at a time when the state’s budget deficit is $14 billion, and growing at a rate of nearly $1 billion per month. In addition, having to purchase the bio-fuel component from other states.

I look for a reversal of the 1930’s dust-bowl induced migration, with out-of-work California farmers moving east back to Oklahoma or other wetter states! Perhaps the new book written on this event will be called The Wrath of Grapes. ;-)

Differentiation always increases the noise to signal ratio. If climate is the integral of weather, then the derivative of climate is simply weather, and we already know that weather does not represent climate.

I think this is a neat and objective bit of analysis and suggests that, at least in the past, CO2 does not influence atmospheric temperature, simply that a warming world temporarily pumps up atmospheric CO2 (presumably by a lagged liberation of CO2 from the Oceans and Soils).

It also shows a lack of evidence for positive feedbacks in the atmosphere (otherwise I think it would show temperatures increasing beyond the peak for some time while CO2 began to naturally dissipate – presumably back into the Oceans and Soils)

The mathematics here end up being a lovely non-Cartesian,
non-Euclidean sinusoidal geometry. You can take advantage of commutativity and associativity of the data, and the graph falls right out
of the data. The asymmetry of the data when plotted on a sinusoidal
geometry is EXACTLY consistent with elliptical orbits. If you apply
Kepler’s laws and Occam’s Razor, variations in CO2 here on earth
are associated with the sun’s orbit in the galaxy. “”

Frank, have you considered calling up George Noori to speak to him about this on his “Coast-to-Coast AM” late night radio talk show ? You’d be a smash hit with his audience.

Have any of you looked into the analytical methods to measure CO2 in ice cores? I’ve have a little and as a practicing analytical chemist (with considerable experience in gas measurements, including CO2) I can say that something does not look right.

First, before the “new and improved” procedures were developed (early 80’s) CO2 measurements routinely showed levels from 300 to 700 ppm or higher. The new procedures dropped those results by a factor of more than 2. I’ve read a few of the early papers (Delmas, et. el.) and I have to say, having been a judge at several science fairs, that high schoolers demonstrate a more rigorous use of scientific methods.

In any case, my experience tells me that the precision claimed is unrealistically good and the CO2 measurements are likely biased low. I hope to look into this further.

That CO2 is a relatively weak player is evident from any reasonable examination of the geologic record. In Miocene times the climate was about 10°F warmer than it is today and CO2 concentration was significantly less, counter to goracle / Mannian assumptions. Miocene warmth must have resulted from mechanisms other than any excess CO2 in the atmosphere. During the Pleistocene, the evidence indicates CO2 increased and was accompanied by global cooling. In no time scale, decadal, century, milenial or larger is there any evidence that CO2 has played a significant role . It’s only in GCM-Nintendo land that CO2 drives climate. Frank’s analysis is a welcome contribution.

Luis: “Allegedly, CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, but in Fig.2 we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks. This is also problematic:”

Not really problematic. First, this is a study of trends…not peaks. Even so, looking at Fig. 5, (where he’s trying to show CO2 leading temperature) the temperature drops before CO2. Now, do this: Print one of the graphs, and grab a pencil. (this isn’t very scientific, but it will make the point) Use the pencil and smooth out the peaks, and you’ll see that CO2 peaks after the temperature.

Frank, great to see you posting here. I saw your post on ICECAP and liked it so much I copied and reported from it to add to my Skeptics’ Climate Science Primer and my page on Arctic/Antarctic issues. I wanted to check that you were ok with my work! I changed your red to green, to help convey the message that CO2 = happy plants!

This is an old issue that keeps on coming up. But the problem is the twist: “Yes, we already know that CO2 follows temperature initially in the ice records. But the thing is, it then ADDS an amplifying factor”. Now I’ve found that this is no more than bluster and assertion by RealClimate mainly. It’s GOOD YES GOOD to have these beautiful graphs to counter even those assertions.

Why is the cooling period slower??? I’ve had thoughts about this. The cosmos (black holes etc) often operates by (1) explosive bang (2) period of settling-down. We heat saucepans fast and they cool slowly. It’s just natural, well, it feels like that. But WHAT OH WHAT are the specific factors that slow the cooling? CO2 is about like a fat lady going out into a blizzard wearing a nightie. You need far more robust mechanisms for a delay that takes thousands of years.

The Vostok data has been frequently misrepresented as “proof” that rising atmospheric CO2 causes global warming. But the inconvenient fact is the data shows first it gets warm, then CO2 goes up. Future CO2 levels can’t cause warming.

Then we’re told CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it must be contributing to the global warming. Fair enough (it’s possible), but doesn’t this mean CO2 is not causing the warming? Isn’t that the crux of the matter — stop man-made CO2 emissions in order to save the planet from some future run-away climate catastrophe? If CO2 is not causing the warming, then why do we need to control it?

The fallback position is always CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so it must be affecting climate somehow. This is a valid, but unproven, hypothesis. the climate just isn’t that simple, nor is CO2 a powerful greenhouse gas. You can’t discard the Vostok data without also discarding the entire AGW GHG hypothesis along with it.

Is the temperature in the recent past from the ice core or other readings? If it can be compared to the temperature peaks recorded in the other interglacials, then I conclude that one of two things is true:
1. The current interglacial is naturally cooler than prior interglacials and we will resume cooling soon (in geologic terms).
2. The current interglacial has not achieved its natural interglacial peak temperature and can be expected to warm another degree or so due to non-anthropogenic causes.

It appears that the Vostok core results are generally accepted. I would be more comfortable if samples from other areas confirmed the Vostok temperature/CO2 record.

In particular, is there another method to determine the maximum temperature achieved in the prior interglacials?

It has always bothered me that I do not see a discussion on when the current interglacial warming (natural) starts to be dominated by anthropogenic warming.

Few of us are familiar enough wih the literature on this topic to really judge whether the assumptions hold and the analysis is new and valid. It this is a valid study, it should be submitted to a scientific journal for peer review.

Gore’s above-and-below two-chart Vostok data presentation and the fabricated hockey stick curve are the two main things that shocked me two years ago, when I noticed that Gore had (1) reversed cause and effect for the Vostok temperature and CO2 data and (2) plotted two different variables on one chart to make it look like temperatures have risen off-scale during the short period at the end of his chart where he was plotting tree ring data instead of surface temperature measurements. Remember that scene in his movie where he climbed a tall ladder to emphasize the panic-inducing exaggeration?

The Mann-Gore hokey hockey stick schtick has been thoroughly discredited for some time now and most climate scientists also acknowledge that satellite measurements of tropospheric temperature are much more accurate than Hansen’s buggered ground station temperature measurements, which Gore gleefully used.

However, Hansen and Gore’s Vostok cause and effect reversal, though commented on frequently, never seemed to me to capture the attention it deserves – until now. I was outraged three years ago, and even more so now that Hansen and Gore are still trying to deceive people on the simple cause and effect question. If Hansen and Gore had ever been willing to have an honest debate about this I would have given them the benefit of doubt instead of having to conclude that they were deliberately trying to deceive everybody.

I do note the very low temperature crossover of the temperature/CO2 curves. If that had ever been the basis of Hansen and Gore’s arguments I would have given them some credit for at least trying to explain it. Obviously they are not using that to support their argument because they know it doesn’t hold water. Whatever mechanism might explain this at six deg C below the interglacial temperatures of the last few thousand years can’t credibly be used to make a case for global warming predictions from anthropogenic CO2 now. Whenever I see the initials AGW, I feel that really must stand for Al Gore Warming, since there seems to be more hot air from him than there is from any anthropogenic CO2 global warming.

Much has been said about the difference in the slope of CO2, i.e. a sharp rise versus a delayed fall. I am no expert, but we might intuitively expect this due to biological activity. CO2 rise would be caused by off-gassing as temperature increased, which is a fairly fast process. This increased CO2 also stimulates the biosphere, which stores CO2 through primary production. This stored CO2 would release more slowly through decomposition, and uptake of CO2 by plants would slow gradually due to the changing climate. I wonder if anyone can confirm this mechanism?

Beautiful work. Just beautiful. The symmetry test in particular. If CO2 has an effect in a direction at a temperature, ought not it be symmetrical (same effect on opposite side of the peak)? Had not thought of that…

And the max effect ‘tipping point’ falsification! If we’ve been there before and got colder, much colder; there is no tipping point to the hot side (but sure likes some other driver making a ‘tipping point’ to the down side…)

Thank you. Danke. Gracias. Merce. Milli grazi…

Side note: I think it would add some interest to have some threads that were bilingual. I find it easier to figure out some of the finer points if a poster uses both their native language and English. Sometimes the flavor of the original language can add some insight, and the seasoning always makes the stew a bit better.

The idea that the changing CO2 capacity of oceans as they warm and cool explains much of the variability in atmospheric CO2 seen in the ice core data is straightforward enough. What processes have been proposed to account for these changes in atmospheric CO2 if CO2 is the cause, and not the consequence of the temperature variability?

Both the lag time from temperature change to CO2 change and the shape of the curves suggest that temperature is driving CO2.

As well understood and mentioned on this thread, CO2 drives temperature in a logarithmic relationship. However, when temperature drives CO2 (into/out of the oceans), the relationship is linear.

If CO2 is driving temperature, then on a graph of CO2 and temperature vs. time, the temperature and CO2 curves should be parallel when CO2 is graphed on a log scale and temperature on a linear scale.

If temperature is driving CO2, than on a graph of CO2 and temperature vs. time, the temperature and CO2 curves should be in parallel when CO2 is graphed on a linear scale and temperature on a linear scale.

Examine figure 2, which is a graph on linear scale of both CO2 and temperature. Since the curves are about parallel during the rise of CO2 and temperature, I must conclude that the temperature is driving the CO2 at that time.

“Some people believe that 90% of co2 has a life of around 50 years and the remaining 10% stays around for much longer. ”

As the cosmogenic production of 14C precedes its peak in life-forms by 60 years this has to be near the limit of residence time, the extreme outlier.

Spencer, here at WUWT a year ago, compared the 13C:12C variance of MLO seasonal signal with that of the long-term trend under F-Test. The graphs were identical. Keeling believed the seasonal signal biogenic and the trend anthropogenic.

Both surmises cannot be true, therefore the anthropogenic signal is not visible at all. Looking at the October minimum in the seasonal signal leads me to question its origin as well.

Who could scrub the effect of both fluences and also produce the seasonal signal? How about the temperature controlled partial-pressure of CO2 in water? 40 years ago that answer was orthodox Earth Science re: the Carbon Cycle.

Progress? Progress? Don’t talk about progress. My daughter is $55 trillion in debt before her first birthday.

“Bill D (11:44:33) :
Few of us are familiar enough wih the literature on this topic to really judge whether the assumptions hold and the analysis is new and valid. It this is a valid study, it should be submitted to a scientific journal for peer review.”

If it’s to pass peer review, then it must be expanded to include the effects of ice sheet size and atmospheric methane concentration. In fact, if all three are considered, then the temperature vs time graph is explained very well.

Randall my experience tells me that the precision claimed is unrealistically good and the CO2 measurements are likely biased low. I hope to look into this further.

Then I hope to see a paper from you like this one on that subject. We need another look at what Jaworowski claimed. I too, and I guess Frank Lansner and many here, also suspect the CO2 record levels, but don’t have the means etc to investigate.

Luis Dias (09:39:26) : Allegedly, CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, but in Fig.2 we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks.

This just looks like ‘peak clipping’ to me. Look at Fig. 1 and notice that CO2 seems to always hit the same level then plunge. That kind of consistent peak argues for a mechanism that stops the rise and the ‘flat top’ on the curve in Fig. 2 also argues for ‘hitting the ceiling’. Mechanism? It would be highly speculative… but I would only point out that both plants and chemical processes are highly accelerated with temperature…

So when I look at #2 I see CO2 lagging temperature right up ’till it hits a ceiling and holds. Then as temperatures plunge, it starts following down.

I could easily see a warming planet being gradually covered with more and more plants that then suck the CO2 out of the air just in time for the interglacial to end and a plunge into an ice age to slowly cover the plants in ice.

Related to this is one of the ‘other’ GHG sources that “the CO2 did it” folks like to ignore on the downside. Methane Clathrate. (Methane ice on the ocean floor at great depth. It is only stable under pressure when cold.)

The theory I’ve heard is that as the ocean level drops in an ice age glacial, the methane clathrate on the ocean floor destabilizes at lowered pressures.

Methane floods into the air (slowly oxidizing to CO2) leading to the temperature spike up (melting glaciers and exposing long buried C in permafrost). The feedback to interglacial dominates. At the top, plants flourish (slowly taking CO2 out) and the detritus of life takes the (CH20)n down to the ocean floor to form methane clathrates again. Feedback now runs to glacials.

If this theory were operative, the ‘top’ would simply be as the CH4 sources are gone (ocean floor re-pressurized as water rises; permafrost melted / gone) and the CO2 => (CH20)n is in full force. The feedback to glacial can now dominate. The CO2 peak would look rather like that in Fig. 2.

“notice that CO2 seems to always hit the same level then plunge. That kind of consistent peak argues for a mechanism that stops the rise and the ‘flat top’ on the curve in Fig. 2 also argues for ‘hitting the ceiling’”

The CO2 changes are also only capable of explaining a maximum of 2.0C of the temperature change while the Vostok record shows 10C of change (5C globally with the poles showing more temperature reduction in the ice ages).

180 ppm increase to 280 ppm in CO2 is not even one doubling.

So not only is there big discrepancies in the trends, CO2 can only explain a small part of the temperature changes in the ice ages even if the maximum global warming numbers are used.

It was my goal with this writing, to give a useful tool in the debate. A tool I have been looking for myself. If some of you super fine debaters will use some of this, honestly I will be very happy.

Thankyou all for your feedback!!!!! Really.
Yes, what I show is truly banal, and some of it is not at all news. Just a tool to illustrate the obvious so simple that it hopefully will break some stonewalls down in the debates.

Thankyou Anthony for the courage to puplish my writings.

@Bob Buchanan (09:04:33) :
“ how was Graph 2 created? “
Thank you for interest! Graph 2 illustrates average values for the big tops from the Vostok data. This way for instance a typical AGW-argument about “cherry picking” can be avoided. For instance, if you ´have 4 values for a CO2 point from 4 tops, you take the average value. This gives a middle-curve including all cherries.

@Phils dad
The max values from fig 5. just illustrates the CO2 concentrations highest for the Vostokdata.

@Luis Dias (09:39:26) :
“Allegedly, CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, but in Fig.2 we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks.”
It was in no way my intention to prove that CO2 lags temperature, because this is commonly accepted long ago by al parts in the debate. (The graphs are sligthly too rough to show it 100% clearly)
I wrote :” The dive after 230.000 ybp peak shows, that cooling CAN be rapid”
When the heating period has been only short, temperature dive seems faster. This could imply, that the slowing of cooling might be explained by accumulated heat in oceans and more – so it seems that cooling pace might be controlled by other things than CO2. Unless that it’s a coicidence that longer varmperiod leads to slower cooling phases…? Hardly :-)

Conclusions similar to Frank’s can be advanced from another angle. The rise of CO2 from ice age to interglacial is some 280-180 = 100 ppm. The rise of CO2 due to industrialisation is some 380-280 = 100 ppm, a similar increment. Yet the temperature rise at the end of an ice age is an order of magnitude higher than the 0.6 deg C at most due to industrialisation. This argument is complicated by the non-linear logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature, but the argument still seems qualitatively sound: CO2 is not a strong driver of global temperature.

Why is the cooling period slower??? I’ve had thoughts about this. The cosmos (black holes etc) often operates by (1) explosive bang (2) period of settling-down. We heat saucepans fast and they cool slowly. It’s just natural, well, it feels like that. But WHAT OH WHAT are the specific factors that slow the cooling? CO2 is about like a fat lady going out into a blizzard wearing a nightie. You need far more robust mechanisms for a delay that takes thousands of years.

…can it be caused by the Earth’s moltan core…ie like putting a very low heat back under the saucepan?

Very nice Frank, I had not seen an analysis of the delta between CO2 and Temperature on the falling edge.

Regarding your final hypothesis: “It seems that a longer warming period of the earth would result in a slower cooling period afterward due to accumulated heat in ocean.

If this were true, wouldn’t the oceans tend to dampen the leading edge (rise) in temperature as well? I’m assuming that the ocean absorbs heat at the same rate that it gives it up, but perhaps this is not the case.

For those who find this a nice piece of work, good. But in all this debate, the actions and attitudes of a few scientists (Hansen, Mann) may have convinced some that ALL scientists are ideologically biased, and utterly stupid. One problem, of course, is that most people do not have access to scientific journals (Open Access is stil an unrealized goal). So most people are not aware of the sheer size of the scientific literature on the subject. So if you think this post is good science, go read some of those papers, and you’ll see that there is a lot of good science being made by professional scientists as well. In fact, I found that the field of “ocean carbon cycle” studies is much less ideologically tainted than, say, paleoclimate, or modeling. Researchers are, for example, much more honest in acknowledging their ignorance.

Now, I’ll add that the “Goresque” view of the interaction between CO2 and temperature in glacial ages is far from being the mainstream view in the scientific literature. The mechanisms underlying the dynamics of temperature and CO2 in glacial and interglacial ages are still pretty much unresolved.

In particular, the real big riddle is not that CO2 rises with temperature, but how it can get so low when it’s cold. Models simply can’t explain it. There are subtle effects here. when the ice melts, it frees up space for forests to grow. So while the ocean and the melting ice may release CO2, the growing forest will take it up, and thus limit the growth of CO2. However, when the cold sets in again, the dying forest should, in principle, release all that stored CO2, keeping the concentration high. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here, as CO2 stays high while temperature drops. But then other effects are at play. Cyanobacteria in the ocean are a major player in the CO2 game. Their ability to eat up CO2 and dump it at the bottom of the oceans is highly temperature dependent. What is unknown is how these bacteria expand and contract as the oceans freeze over and melt again.

I’ve commented here before (and that’s after I got interested in the subject and read a lot of the papers), that though much is known about ocean circulation, and how this can affect CO2 through the thermohaline circulation, very little is known of the influence of the marine biota on CO2, but the researchers in the field have come to realize that this is a big (unknown) part of the equation. So our knowledge could radically change in coming years, as more and more is learned about this.

“Pushing on a spring” is a good analogy for rising CO2 because as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”

Except that is not true. A 300 lb/in spring requires 300 lbs to compress 1 inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, and so on until it is completely compressed.

You ask “Moreover: can you find a situation in the past where CO2 went up to 350 ppm and see what happens? This would be relevant…”

I can’t find the original source for this graph though I remember back checking it the first time I saw it. Here is a widely reproduced graph of CO2 vs temp going back 650 Myears. There are ice ages with CO2 levels several times greater than today and warm periods like the present with low CO2.

We seem to be looking so closely at the bark that we can’t see the forest.
Consider the first graph and notice the dramatic, periodic swings from lows to highs. This is the Pleistocene paleoclimate from deep ice ages to interglacials. The Vostok ice cores simply confirmed what we already knew from dozens of previous studies. It was my awareness of those previous studies that made me skeptical when the AGW folk began making noise back in the late 80s. Nothing Hansen, Gore, Mann, or the rest made any sense in the context of an interglacial period’s natural variation. Gore’s often-made statements of recent years being the “warmest in history” work only if history goes back no more than 750 years. The increases in CO2, indeed the increase in temperature, are miniscule in terms of the natural glacial-interglacial natural variation.
If AGW wonks want to suggest that CO2 drives the increase in temperature, then tell us the source of the CO2 that caused the the amount of CO2 to rise from 160 ppm in the depths of the glacials to the 350 ppm during the interglacials. I’ve searched the paleoanthropological record and could not find any autoparts associated with Homo erectus artifacts. In fact, there are no auto parts in any anthropological dig older than about 120 years.

To put a fine point on it, the worst case scenarios postulated by the IPCC, Hansen, Mann, and the rest are well within the natural variation of an interglacial. The worst case scenario will attain only the average in both temperature and sea levels during the past 6,000. Reducing CO2 emissions to some ridiculous percentage of 1990 levels (as the government is now seeking) will have no affect on world’s temperatures, locally or globally.

That is a resolution problem. You probably saw similar low res graphs in AIT where Gore deliberately distorted this info, which is your first problem, believing Gore who thinks that he has to decieve you to save the planet. There is an 800 year lag in the data. You can believe it or don’t.

@TonyB (09:40:43) :
“I have posted here before about Ernst Beck. Frank has had his disagreement with him”
Beck is presently updating and adjusting for more and more inputs. The compilation of CO2 data Beck did was obviously a very relevant thing to do. Becks data are important although the precision is sometimes not perfect. I hope Beck will go on and on making the best of these data. Its very interesting what he´s up to, and I can only support him for his truth seeking project.

@Jim Steele (09:54:25) :
“It is exactly this analysis that made me a skeptic when I was teaching Global Warming to my students. “
Yes, I can follow you on that one!!

@Flanagan (09:55:04) :
“ Nobody ever said that CO2 was the only climatologic driver. “
The illustrations above not only shows that CO2 is not the reason for the big temperature changes of ice ages. They show that CO2´s role is rather small, if any.

So who cares, is that what your saying? Just let the big companies fill up the underground with CO2 under pressure even though CO2 has little if any effect? In a time of crisis? Using endless dollars on CO2? – because as you say, there are probably other climatologic drivers? That’s not a convincing argument to focus on CO2, is it?

@Ellie in Belfast (10:10:55) :
“I can’t wait to try this on a few wavering friends.”
Thankyou thankyou, you make my day!!

foinavon (10:29:42) : Of course the ice age cycles are driven by the slow, slow, slow variations in the orbital properties of the Earth (Milankovitch cycles). Deglaciation is likely driven by enhanced Spring insolation in the deep Southern hemisphere which results in very slow warming, and as the Southern Ocean ice melts and the oceans start to warm, CO2 is released (thus the lag represented in the Vostock cores).

Unfortunately, you have your hemispheres exactly backwards.

From “Ice Age” by John and Mary Gribbin (a wonderful read, gives the richness of the characters in the discovery of the ice ages, the history of the process, and a gentle introduction to some of the science involved.):

Pg.53: […]the single most important thing to emerge from these discussions was Koppen’s realization of the key season in the Ice Age saga. Adhemar and Croll had thought that the decisive factor in encouraging Ice to spread across the Northern Hemisphere must be the occurrence of extremely cold winters, resulting in increased snowfall. At first, Milankovitch had shared this view. But it was Koppen who pointed out that it is always cold enough for snow to fall in the Arctic winter, even today, and that the reason that the Northern Hemisphere is not in the grip of a full Ice Age is because the ‘extra’ snow melts away again in the summer.

[EMS: Note that the Southern Hemisphere is similarly irrelevant to the ice age cycle since it is always cold enough for snow to stay frozen. It just doesn’t change enough to matter.]

Pg 54: He reasoned that the way to encourage the ice to spread would be to have a reduction in summer warmth, because then less of the winter snowfall would melt. If less snow melted in summer than fell in winter, the ice sheets would grow – and once they had started to grow, the feedback effect of the way the ice and snow reflect away incoming solar energy would enhance the process.

Pg 57: It isn’t so much that Ice Ages occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce particularly cool summers, rather what matters is that Interglacials only occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce unusually warm summers, encouraging the ice to retreat. Without all three of the astronomical rhythms working in step this way, the Earth stays in a deep freeze.

End Quote.

So, to summarize:

1) The south pole doesn’t matter to the process, it’s always frozen.

2) We are normally in a long ice age and only pop out for short intervals when conditions are just right.

3) The ‘just right’ is Northern Hemisphere summers warm enough to melt the snow and ice.

4) Warm enough is when the N. hemisphere: must be pointed at the sun in summer when: at close approach to the sun with the right elliptical shape, with the pole tilted over far enough, with… or we freeze.

I would add a note that I think it is particularly illuminating that we are near the end of an Interglacial (next stop is an ice age), the only thing that keeps it away is the summer Arctic ice and snow melt. So what is the AGW crowd in histrionics about? That the Arctic ice and snow are not sticking through the summer… Think about it… As I asked my pooch once: “And just what will you do with that car once you catch it and bite the tire?”

The idea that the changing CO2 capacity of oceans as they warm and cool explains much of the variability in atmospheric CO2 seen in the ice core data is straightforward enough. What processes have been proposed to account for these changes in atmospheric CO2 if CO2 is the cause, and not the consequence of the temperature variability?

The changes in CO2 are due to warming of the Southern oceans initially. The sinusoidal variations of the properties of the Earth’s orbit result in enhanced Spring insolation in the early stages of glacial to interglacial transitions. The deep Southern oceans slowly, slowly warm, sea ice slowly melts and the oceans begin to release CO2 into the atmosphere.

Although the Antarctic ice cores indicate that the rise in atmospheric CO2 lags warming in Antarctica, the Greenland cores indicate that Greenland warming follows the rise in CO2. So the rise in atmospheric CO2 during ice age transitions (glacial –> interglacial) is both a consequence and a cause.

Remember that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. However it gets into the atmosphere it causes warming, completely independently of how it got there. If its rise in the atmosphere is the result of enhanced solar warming, then it amplifies the latter. Alternatively, the rise in CO2 can be the primary driver of warming. That has occurred in several (perhaps most or all) of the extinction events in the deep past.

Much has been said about the difference in the slope of CO2, i.e. a sharp rise versus a delayed fall. I am no expert, but we might intuitively expect this due to biological activity. CO2 rise would be caused by off-gassing as temperature increased, which is a fairly fast process. This increased CO2 also stimulates the biosphere, which stores CO2 through primary production. This stored CO2 would release more slowly through decomposition, and uptake of CO2 by plants would slow gradually due to the changing climate. I wonder if anyone can confirm this mechanism? “”

Well Tamara I can’t confirm your hypothesis; but I believe you are on the right track.

There’s another effect as well relating the the exchange with the ocean.

The entire ocean surface is in direct contact with the atmosphere (ok get pedantic and say the bottom surface of the ocean is in contact with the land). So when the ocean warms up, the CO2 outgassing goes straight into the atmosphere, so it’s a fairly prompt process.

However the converse is not true. The entire atmosphere surface (bottom) is NOT in contact with the ocean. Therefore if the ocean cools down and starts taking up CO2, some of that excess atmospheric CO2 now has to diffuse from over the land to over the ocean before it can dissolve i9n the ocean, so that would slow down the CO2 uptake in the ocean. But I couldn’t say that the time scales involved in such delays are commensurate with the 800 year offset.

But I tend to believe your thesis that biologic processes are heavily involved.

There is also a notion that since the ocean surface is warm, it does not contain a whole lot of CO2 anyway. The lower layers are cooler, so they have a greater CO2 capacity, and there should be a sort of segregation coefficient that is constantly depleting the warm surface waters of CO2 and driving it deeper into the colder depths; and this process keeps the warm surface waters depleted of CO2.
So when the ocean surface warms up, there isn’t a whole lot of surface CO2 to outgas, so the prompt outgassing would be somewhat limited, and to get at the deeper stores of CO2 the ocean basically has to turn over and bring those cold deep waters to the surface. I’ve been told by floks who should know, that this oceanic turnover is the main source of the 800 year delay on the rising edge.

I tend to go along with your idea that biological growth processes tend to rule the CO2 decline process; but I can’t prove that either.

Have ever noticed that their famous temperature curve suddently changes slope around the 60s and 70s. This can also be correlated to the bulk of atomic tests that were done during that time. According to some new gravity/magnetic theory, the blasts sent and magnetic pulse to the core of the earth, this pulse and changes in magnetic flow lines are also the reason for the well known shape of nuclear explosions. The theory does not say by how much the core of the planet has heated up but if you think about it, if the core heats up, it would in return heat up the ocean, thus also driving more release of CO2.

What is even more interesting is that magnetic/gravity theory could help explain sunspots and solar flares and apparently there is correlation with the perturbations in magnetic fields around the sun, caused by the planets, and solar activity, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.

I would think that once we hit the minimum temperature, of the maximum in glaciation, as the earth tilt;s back and things are slowly starting to heat up, the north ice cores will show CO2 rising first because the south is heating up more first.

Another plausible explanation of course is once the earth starts warming up, the polar bears take out their snowmobiles and spew tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Conclusions similar to Frank’s can be advanced from another angle. The rise of CO2 from ice age to interglacial is some 280-180 = 100 ppm. The rise of CO2 due to industrialisation is some 380-280 = 100 ppm, a similar increment. Yet the temperature rise at the end of an ice age is an order of magnitude higher than the 0.6 deg C at most due to industrialisation. This argument is complicated by the non-linear logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature, but the argument still seems qualitatively sound: CO2 is not a strong driver of global temperature.

We’ve had a round 0.8 oC of warming since the start of the industrial age.

it’s easy to calculate that a rise of atmospheric CO2 from 280-385 ppm should give around 1.2-1.3 oC of warming at equilibrium within a simple model of a climate sensitivity of 3 oC of warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2.

The warming during the glacial to interglacial transition was very, very, very slow (around 5 oC of warming during 5000 years, for example during the last glacial interglacial transition 15000-10000 years ago). So we’re warming around 15-20 times faster than that now. Since the climate system has very significant inertias to temperature change (largely due to the massive heat capacity of the oceans) and the atmospheric CO2 levels are rising now around 100 times or more faster than during the ice age transition, the climate system hasn’t quite “caught up” with the forcing from the current levels of atmospheric CO2. So we still have quite a bit of warming “in the pipeline”. Within a climate sensitivity of 3 oC of warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2, the extraordinarily slow rise in CO2 from 180-280 ppm gives almost 2 oC of amplification of the Milankovitch-driven total warming in the glacial to interglacial transition (around 35-40% of the total warming).

So when CO2 is an amplifier of a primary driver of warming (solar insolation changes due to Milankovitch cycles), CO2 is a secondary driver of warming (it’s an amplifier). When CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere directly it’s a primary forcing. Its properties can be understood uniformly by our understanding that the Earth has a warming response to enhanced CO2 equivalent to something near 3 oC of warming per doubling of CO2, however it gets into the atmosphere.

I have been enjoying your well-reasoned, detailed and wise contributions. Suspect that behind that is more than book learning and lab practice – an apogee perspective? “”

Well deepslope, I appreciate the sentiment; but don’t be fooled. I really don’t know didley about what I regard as climate; which is how what we coloquially think of as climate, varies over the globe. Why is Australia so dry ? How did the Sahara becoem desertified? How the hell does the PDO work. I know nowt about such stuff; but I’m sure there are people who do.

so I pretty much have to constrain myself to the bigger picture question:- “Is planet earth radiating the right amount of thermal electromagnetic radiation to keep the surface temperatures in a comfortable range.”

That’s pretty much pure Physics, and mostly thermodynamics; and that stuff I do know.

In addition, I have no axe to grind; I am Teflon coated. I don’t work for any energy, or other resource industry company; I don’t invest in their stocks, unless my totally blind IRA mutual funds do so without my knowledge or direction. And I don’t get so much as a brass Razoo in grant money to do any research on any of this, from either government or other institutional money bags.
So all I care about, is that we get the science correct; and that we do that before a bunch of damned fools do some actual real damage to this planet; its environment, and its economic ability to support at least the population we have on earth today, at a reasonable level. Naturally, I would wish we had fewer people, and I wish we had much fewer really poor people; and for sure it is going to get a heck of a lot worse than it is, if we don’t put the CO2 genii back in the bottle.

My bottom line belief, which I am not presently able to prove beyond doubt, is that so long as the earth has its oceans, we cannot change the temperature either up or down, even if we wanted to. And if we could; where would we set it ? The hydrologic cycle of evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation is in total feedback control of the average global temperatures. Things like CO2 and Svensmark’s Cosmic rays, are not drivers of the climate, but they do contribute, in that CO2 can augment water vapor absorption of thermal radiation, and Svensmark’s cosmic rays, can affect the ease of cloud formation, and more importantly where clouds form, and so modify the cloud regulation process.
I think the mistake people are making with regard to Svensmark, is that they are either trying to prove that this is what drives the climate; or that this has nothing to do with the climate, and I don’t think he ever said anything like that. But I think it is an important cause of variation in climate, that is linked to the sun behavior, and gives the sun more effect than just the 0.1% P-P change in the solar constant. Leif seems to say the sun is not a big driver; but it’s offspring are having bigger effects than it has directly. The total energy linkages between sun and earth are somewhat more than a simple EM radiation beam.

foinavon
You Said: “Alternatively, the rise in CO2 can be the primary driver of warming. That has occurred in several (perhaps most or all) of the extinction events in the deep past”

Is it really your position that most or all of the deep past extinction events are a result of CO2 driven global warming? I have not seen that in the literature. Please provide a few links to this assertion and how explain the mechanism on how CO2 warmed the planet enough to kill the dinosaurs after the meteor induced “nuclear” winter.
thanks
Ed

Roger Sowell (11:15:18) : I find it very interesting that the CO2 rises around 5500 to 7500 years after temperature peak. Is there any explanation for this?

The easy suspect would be plants. As the ice age sets in, lots of plants die. Decay leads to CO2 (until the plants remains are sequestered under glaciers)

The consequences are severe, as agriculture will receive far less water than normal, perhaps 15 percent of the usual amount.

Since cities account for about 5% of total water usage, they are completely irrelevant to any discussion of drought. (Despite all the nanny nags to stop flushing for #1..) This also means that substantially all the reduction in volume of consumption must come from Agriculture (EPA et. al. will require continued ‘natural’ flows to the ocean for wildlife… See Oregon as an existence proof.)

This is not what the state needs, a reduction in tax revenue from a significant part of the economy, at a time when the state’s budget deficit is $14 billion, and growing at a rate of nearly $1 billion per month. In addition, having to purchase the bio-fuel component from other states.

Financial flogging will continue until monetary moral improves…

I look for a reversal of the 1930’s dust-bowl induced migration, with out-of-work California farmers moving east back to Oklahoma or other wetter states! Perhaps the new book written on this event will be called The Wrath of Grapes. ;-)

Oh! The imagery! I love it!! ( I can feel the hangover now as Califonians down their last saved Napa Reds on the long sorry trek to Texas… 100 miles at a time, asking folks along the way if they can borrow an outlet to charge there e-car… Brother, can you spare a Watt?)

Unfortunately, the last time we had a cycle like this it was The Dust Bowl in Oklahoma… So if you subscribe to “the sun did it” theory we have:

See:

Notice that the dip at the Dalton has a similar though more shallow dip at 1/2 the Dalton ago from now? Our choices are basically: A Maunder, Dalton, or half Dalton low (in order of most comfort for us).

When you are rooting for The Dust Bowl as a relatively ‘good thing’ it’s time to stock up on Scotch, Napa Reds…

So I’m rooting for “the sun did it” to be proven wrong by events… Or a line connecting the minima of the Maunder, Dalton, Great Depression sunspot lows and temperature lows to continue the upward slope to define our modern lows… (i.e. we’re on a much longer up trend and these are dips on a faster frequency with ‘higher lows’)

Gore is pointing to Venus and Mercury to show how CO2 is warming Venus and not Mercury. Where the hell is he taking his science?

According to this guy ( http://www.whiteworld.com/non-fic/Venus-temp.htm ), and if we want to compare apples with apples, the 96% CO2 contained in Venus atmosphere is only responsible to about 20 C more than our pitty little 350 ppm here on Earth. Of course the guy corrected for the pressure and the distance from the sun (apparently Venus is getting almost 2 times more radiation from the sun than Earth, but according to Gore, the distance is not important).

So, one can ask if during glaciation, the atmosphere could get thinner enough (lower pressure) to even cool it more?

@E.M.Smith (13:57:14)Pg 57: It isn’t so much that Ice Ages occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce particularly cool summers, rather what matters is that Interglacials only occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce unusually warm summers

Two questions arose for me from the excerpt:

1) when the Earth switched over from the Hot to the Freeze epoch, and why?
2) how much closer to the Sun the Earth should be now to be in a state of climatic equilibrium favorable to us (with summer/winter cycles and w/o glacial/interglacial periods)?

Gribbin and Gribbin is a very nice book. But it is a book by science populizers describing 10 year old and more science from a time before much of the polar ice core data was available or had been analyzed in detail.

Your comment:

Note that the Southern Hemisphere is similarly irrelevant to the ice age cycle since it is always cold enough for snow to stay frozen. It just doesn’t change enough to matter.

…is an erroneous conclusion based on a false premise. During the glacial period of the ice age cycles, sea surface ice obviously extends extensively from the Antarctic towards the lower latitudes of the Southern hemisphere. Enhanced insolation in the Spring/Summer, if this forcing is persistent over hundreds of years, will cause this sea ice to retreat. The reduction in albedo enhances sea surface warming. Eventually the Southern oceans will lose their ice cover, warm and begin to release CO2 into the atmosphere.

Since you’re quoting the very nice (but somewhat outdated) book by the Gribbins, I’ll quote from some more recent science:

The rise in Southern Ocean temperatures coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice and high-elevation glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere (36, 37). The explanation for the early warming in the Southern Hemisphere could involve increasing springtime solar insolation, which is well correlated with the retreat of sea ice and with the history of sea-salt accumulation in the Antarctic Dome C ice core (fig. S5). We suggest that the trigger for the initial deglacial warming around Antarctica was the change in solar insolation over the Southern Ocean during the austral spring that influenced the retreat of the sea ice (38). Retreating sea ice would have led to enhanced Ekman transport in the Southern Ocean and decreased stratification due to stronger air-sea fluxes.

(n.b. “Ekman transport” is a phenomenon promoting mixing of ocean layers and enhances CO2 efflux from the deep oceans as a result of surface warming…)

It’s increasingly well established that deglaciation is driven by insolation changes in the deep Southern hemisphere, and that the resulting rise in CO2 due to warming-induced efflux from the Southern oceans, amplifies the Milankovitch warming and promotes Northern hemisphere warming. That accounts for the observation that the CO2 rise, which follows warming in Antarctic cores, precedes warming in the Greenland cores.

Above Figure 4 you write: “Below is a graph where I aim to illustrate CO2 as the driver of temperature:” This is potentially confusing, since I think your aim is to show that CO2 can’t be the driver. I think you should reword that to make it clearer what you are doing. (eg “that CO2 is not”)

This is a brave attempt by Frank but is basically an intensely simplistic argument with no grasp of the complexities involved. Frank has been guilty of this previously with his very strong assertion that because the SOI was high back in September then a La Nina was inevitable. I did point out to him there were other factors involved and that these were indicating a la Nina was a low probability event. He was however still convinced that this one particular fact meant that a La Nina was inevitable. We now know he was wrong then and I’m afraid he is once again very wrong here.
He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.

Robert (11:43:11) : If it can be compared to the temperature peaks recorded in the other interglacials, then I conclude that one of two things is true:
1. The current interglacial is naturally cooler than prior interglacials and we will resume cooling soon (in geologic terms).
2. The current interglacial has not achieved its natural interglacial peak temperature and can be expected to warm another degree or so due to non-anthropogenic causes.

If you look at:

You will notice that the ice ages often have a very brief peak, then as the drop begins, sometimes a ‘ledge’ of relative stability before the plunge into the next glacial. Notice that we are sitting on the edge. Notice that it has been one of the longest ledges…

We are sitting on the edge of a plunge into an ice age. (This is geologic time, so the plummet could be 5,000 years away…) The notion that we have anything to fear to the upside is falsified by all those peaks that hit a hard ceiling of “something” and halt dead in their warming tracks. Just as we did about 10,000 years ago…

It has always bothered me that I do not see a discussion on when the current interglacial warming (natural) starts to be dominated by anthropogenic warming.

Perhaps that is because it can not. At best, IMHO, any CO2 driven warming can keep us ‘on the ledge’. It is also clear from the above graph that at the +1C to +3C range something dramatic does a ‘slap down’ of temperatures. This leads to four conclusions:

1) AGW has a hard lid at a degree or two.

2) We are exiting the special conditions that lead to an Interglacial. The natural forces are moving toward an ice age. Slowly. Very Slowly.

3) Therefor AGW can at most partly offset #2 and has little risk (#1). To the extent the AGW thesis is right, it can at most explain the extraordinarly length and stability of our present “ledge”.

Thanks for the analysis Frank and a rejoiner to Luis Dias’ comment that there can be sharp falls in some heating/cooling events and this refutes Frank’s argument.

What often is confused is that heat and temperature are two different things, heat being a quantity and temperature being a level. What Frank was pointing out was a greater amount of heat is transferred to the ocean with longer periods of temperature rise therefore longer periods of cooling are needed for the heat to be released and therfore the temperature to fall. This is a classic example of hysteresis and can be observed in many natural phenomena. The assymetry is indeed intriguing.

Frank presents a hypothesis on why heat can enter the oceans more quickly than it can be released. Although not explicity stated I think he is saying that the mixing delay is the key, with less mixing the hot water (containing much heat per volume of water) is only at surface and it’s higher temperature leads to rapid heat loss through evaporation of water and radiance. However, if there is more time to achieve greater mixing the averaged temperature is lower even though more total heat may be absorbed (because of the greter water volume involved). Because it is a lower temperature there is both a slower heat loss and this as well as the larger amount of total heat contained means it takes longer.

Frank Lansner’s paper elegantly demonstrates the relationship between CO2 and temperature however without detracting from the overall theme of the paper I would like to point out that the assumption has been made that the ice core sample CO2 data is accurate. There are many eminent scientists in this field who challenge the accuracy of this data. Some of the these are Prof. Jaworowski, who was a pioneer in this field, J.J.Drake et. al.
Basically the air trapped in the snow becomes compressed as the build up occurs and the air goes into solution with the pressure build up. Since the solubilities are different the rate of absorption occurs at different rates for different gasses. At a certain depth there are no “air” bubbles left contrary to the IPCC’s numerous declarations. Once in solution the CO2 migrates or combines with the ice crystals to form calthrates. When the ice core is drilled and brought to the surface the pressure is released and the gasses come out of solution however the reconstituted gas is not the same as the original air.
Page 446 of the IPCC 4AR has the following interesting text, “ Ice core records show that atmospheric CO2 varied in the range 180 to 300 ppm over the glacial-interglacial cycles of the last 650kyr …. The quantitative and mechanistic explanation of these CO2 variations remains one of the major unsolved questions in climate research.”
The answer to this is simple the level never got to 180 ppm if it had for the period of time shown on the ice core charts the plant life on the planet would have been decimated and most animals would have starved, basically plants stop growing at 200 ppm. Stomata data by Wagner, Aaby and Visscher prove conclusively that the ice core data is seriously in error. The ice core data can be corrected using J.J.Drake’s correlation, the profile does not change but the ppm values do so the analysis is still valid.

I would add a third question:
3) When the Earth cools the evaporation decreases and the oceans should freeze. In the meantime, the ice grows over the land as well. Does it mean there must be areas of increased evaporation to push the gigantic amount of water onto the land?

Simply speaking I put the CO2 issue aside from any “global” conciderations. Isn’t the CO2 issue a dead end street in the climate disputes?

“The discrepancies between the CO2 profiles from Greenland and Antarctica can be explained by in situ production of excess CO2 due to interactions between carbonate and acidic species. Since the carbonate concentration in Antarctic ice is much lower than in Greenland ice, CO2 records from Antarctica are much less affected by such in situ-produced CO2.”

foinavon (15:15:46) :
It’s increasingly well established that deglaciation is driven by insolation changes in the deep Southern hemisphere, and that the resulting rise in CO2 due to warming-induced efflux from the Southern oceans, amplifies the Milankovitch warming and promotes Northern hemisphere warming. That accounts for the observation that the CO2 rise, which follows warming in Antarctic cores, precedes warming in the Greenland cores.

And then again

” The temporal coincidence of glacial epochs on the Earth and Mars during the Quaternary and latest Amazonian would suggest a coupled system linking both [Sagan, C., Young, A.T., 1973. Nature 243, 459″

gary gulrud (12:56:01) :
“notice that CO2 seems to always hit the same level then plunge. That kind of consistent peak argues for a mechanism that stops the rise and the ‘flat top’ on the curve in Fig. 2 also argues for ‘hitting the ceiling’”

Very nice. Must be an EE.

Thanks! Not an EE but I’ve stared at my share of o-silly-scopes ;-)

Starting with the radio club in high school. (Well, maybe before that: I built my first crystal set when I was about 8, and was SWLing about 10, and built an oscilloscope from an old TV with a friend at about 16 and… you get the picture). Built one of the first personal computers from a kit (MITS Altair) in college. Took some engineering classes, things like transistor theory and circuit design, (along with engineering calculus, physics, FORTRAN, and ALGOL) and was on the EE track until I found that I really liked Economics… I know, sick puppy ;-)

So I’m a very technical Economist with a teaching credential for “Data Processing and Related Technologies” at the college level. Go figure. And most of my professional employment had me up to my eyeballs in computers (software and hardware). (Except when I was working in hospitals, but that’s another thread…)

So thanks for the ‘honorary EE’ by fellow recognition, I cherish it more than any government issued one.

foinavon (14:31:43) :
The warming during the glacial to interglacial transition was very, very, very slow (around 5 oC of warming during 5000 years, for example during the last glacial interglacial transition 15000-10000 years ago). So we’re warming around 15-20 times faster than that now.

Remember that the ice cores have a heavily smoothed signal due to CO2 diffusion and other factors in the ice. We know that heating and cooling rates similar to those of today’s more precise measurements have to have been present in the recent past, due to the fact we can find tree stumps in the arctic, LIA, MWP, etc. Real data explaining the exact rates is not available owing to the recent invention of the thermometer (and language), but plenty of evidence exists to surmise peaks and valleys in the recent past not much different from today’s cycles. One only needs to look at the last 150 years of real data to see these steep variations in both directions. So to argue that high rates of change in either direction didn’t exist before doesn’t make much sense, we just can’t see the signal due to the gaussian filter effects present in the ice core data.

The original signal can’t be put back into the data, but it is certainly no stretch of logic to assume that the climate had short term variations much like the present, on top of the long term trends you see, since many of the same drivers were present (ocean cycles, solar, whatever). If the data could be somehow recovered and shown in the charts above, it would simply be overlayed on top and appear as noise on top of the signal you see (and we would probably filter it out again so we can see it easier for this presentation).

There is no evidence of a flat temperature profile for any length of time anywhere on earth (except maybe the center). If you have found one, it is reasonably safe to assume it either suffers from a filtering effect, or it is a Mann made signal :-).

Thank you, Frank for pointing out some of the benefits of increased CO2. I had an aquarium with a simple CO2 bubbler which was the fad back then, and the plant growth was indeed lush. So I have a residual positive feeling toward CO2. The AGW side never consider this and it has always made me feel uncomfortable since a realistic cost/benefit analysis of increasing CO2 would have to include the positive aspects along with the negatives. Where is this analysis?

Frank’s approach and other common sense empirical approaches such as “Cold Facts on Global Warming” by T.J. Nelson, lead me to believe that a lot of money has been wasted trying to forecast scenarios that are impossible to begin with. Nelson calculates a maximum possible increase of less than 2 degrees at CO2 doubling mainly due to the logarithmic nature of CO2 wavelength absorption. He also points out that if CO2 concentrations continue to increase along the straight line trend they are on now since 1975, doubling will occur in 2250. Not exactly around the corner. Frank introduces the increasing biosphere as another negative driver to keep CO2 increase on or below that trend.

MattN (13:43:25) :“Pushing on a spring” is a good analogy for rising CO2 because as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”

Except that is not true. A 300 lb/in spring requires 300 lbs to compress 1 inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, and so on until it is completely compressed.
———

Except that it is true.
300 lbs for the first inch, 600 lbs for the second, 900 lbs for the third inch.

Timbrom, very simple answer … It does not. CO2 radiative forcing flattens out at about 50 ppm thereafter it has no effect on temperature reference Dr. John Nichol’s paper which in my humble opinion is the best analysis using the fundamental laws of radiation physics. On the other hand increasing CO2 accelerates the growth rate of all green plants hence to total hypocrisy of reducing CO2 is “going green” If the atmosphere ever got to 1000 ppm CO2 the productivity of the worlds agriculture would be doubled with no effect on temperature, just ask a greenhouse operator, some of them spend a lot of money installing CO2 enrichment equipment.

@eric anderson (10:22:33) :
“On what basis does the author of this piece conclude that maximum warming effect of CO2 occurs @ 250-280ppm? “
The 250-280 is just the highest level of CO2 seen for prehistoric vostok data, and thus the max CO2 forcing of the period.

@Robert Rust (10:54:27) :
“ This temp/CO2 graph was pretty much the only evidence Al Gore used to argue his AGW point in his movie”
Yes… the 2500 leading scientists should take a little look at these graphs?

@Lucy Skywalker (11:35:59) :
Thankyou so much, Lucy, I looked at your brilliant sites and will checkout all the interesting contents!
Yes, the green is good to illustrate CO2. ((A little off topic, but you like illustrations, so check my illustration here where the biosphere with the green area in the trend curve: http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/co2hadcrut.jpg ))
You write: “… It’s GOOD YES GOOD to have these beautiful graphs to counter even those assertions. “ Thanks again.
You write “Why is the cooling period slower???” . Well I think what we see reflect how fast Oceans (and possibly upper layers of rock due to magma activity created by solar changing magnetic fields?) cools down. This is supported by the trend, that longer warming period leads to longer cooling period. Warming seems to be accumulated. – And yes, that why the next ice ages may come a little slow as the present warming period has been on for very long time.

@PaulHClark (11:49:33) :
“Figure 2 looks like the key to me “
As I mentioned, Fig 2 is the average curve. In fact, if you only focussed on the 110.000 ybp peak, things would look even worse for the CO2-hypothesis…!

@ Julie L (12:06:32) :
“My first reaction upon seeing the first graph is to notice how infrequently the temperature on earth is this warm, and to realize that this recent warm period is why humanity has thrived.”
– yes, and more: Isnt it funny, that from the short warmperiod (today) we should fear that temperature should explode upwards? That’s a courageous idea…

@ Jeff Id : – I made the fig 2 graph straight forward: Find the peak year, then taking average values of the different major peaks for both CO2 and temp corresponding to the year before and after peak. The worst peak for the CO2 hypothesis is peak 110.000 ybp. I could just have used that, but by making an average, there should be no claim of “cherry picking”.

“The easy suspect would be plants. As the ice age sets in, lots of plants die. Decay leads to CO2 (until the plants remains are sequestered under glaciers)

I also considered that, but plant decay is a temperature-sensitive rate process. If it is cold enough for substantial plant die-off, perhaps it is cold enough to supress the plant decay organisms, too. OTOH, there may be increases and decreases in temperature after plant die-off, so maybe the decay organisms do their work during the brief warm episodes.

re city water usage and droughts

We already have a few water issues in the cities related to the drought. Voluntary conservation measures are urged on the populace, and a citizen “water police” was authorized to report water wasters (washing the car with a free-running hose, overwatering the lawn, etc). Still, these are nothing like we should have, such as bans on washing cars, bans on washing driveways and sidewalks, and watering lawns only on alternate days.

But I agree with your statement that agriculture will take the hit. Domestic use of water is the first priority, farming is around last priority. Industrial and commercial use are somewhere in the middle, and are decided case by case.

re The Wrath of Grapes *grin*

Brother, can you spare a Watt? to charge up their e-car on the cross-country trip. Marvelous…

Unfortunately, I suspect migrating Californians will get very little sympathy from those in other states…witness the Enron traders and their recorded statements as they exacerbated the power crisis a few years ago!

“If it’s to pass peer review, then it must be expanded to include the effects of ice sheet size and atmospheric methane concentration. In fact, if all three are considered, then the temperature vs time graph is explained very well.”

Red herring.

It’s irrelevant what ELSE may cause temp rise/fall, the point of Frank Lansner’s piece was that CO2 is NOT the primary driver of temperature and other effects can and do overwhelm CO2’s forcing. So identifying other factors does not refute this.

Basically the air trapped in the snow becomes compressed as the build up occurs and the air goes into solution with the pressure build up. Since the solubilities are different the rate of absorption occurs at different rates for different gasses. At a certain depth there are no “air” bubbles left contrary to the IPCC’s numerous declarations. Once in solution the CO2 migrates or combines with the ice crystals to form calthrates. When the ice core is drilled and brought to the surface the pressure is released and the gasses come out of solution however the reconstituted gas is not the same as the original air.

It would probably not be that difficult to get a small core at a known depth, compress it in situ with a known gas we’re not interested in (Xenon would probably be good, since it’s inert, big and heavy (not likely to diffuse much)), then extract the compressed core, then release it in lab conditions…? Then compare that sample with one from an adjacent sample of the same depth using conventional techniques. I can’t think of a device with which to do that off hand, but… it might work and shed some light on the subject.

“This is a brave attempt by Frank but is basically an intensely simplistic argument with no grasp of the complexities involved. Frank has been guilty of this previously with his very strong assertion that because the SOI was high back in September then a La Nina was inevitable. I did point out to him there were other factors involved and that these were indicating a la Nina was a low probability event. He was however still convinced that this one particular fact meant that a La Nina was inevitable. We now know he was wrong then and I’m afraid he is once again very wrong here.
He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.”

SUPER EL NINO IN 2006-2007? We suggest that an El Nino is likely to originate in 2006 and that there is a good chance it will be a “super El Nino”, rivaling the 1983 and 1997-1998 El Ninos, which were successively labeled the “El Nino of the century” as they were of unprecedented strength in the previous 100 years (Fig. 1 of Fedorov and Philander 2000). Further, we argue that global warming causes an increase of such “super El Ninos”. Our rationale is based on interpretation of dominant mechanisms in the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) phenomenon, examination of historical SST data, and observed Pacific Ocean SST anomalies in February 2006

maksimovich (15:54:35) :” The temporal coincidence of glacial epochs on the Earth and Mars during the Quaternary and latest Amazonian would suggest a coupled system linking both [Sagan, C., Young, A.T., 1973. Nature 243, 459″

Glacial epochs on Mars? From what little we knew about Mars in 1973, I’d guess TV personality Carl Sagan got his data from several lengthy papers by noted scientist E. R. Burroughs, and a 1936 study by Gordon, F., Zarkov, H., and Ming.

“This [CO2]has lowered its pH by 0.1
pH is the measure of acidity and alkalinity
The vast majority of liquids lie between pH 0 (very acidic) and pH 14 (very alkaline); 7 is neutral
Seawater is mildly alkaline with a “natural” pH of about 8.2″

In practice pH precision is about +/- 0.1 in a lab, without special precautions. No idea what it is in practice in “the ocean” but no doubt they will make thousands of measurements and report the mean to four “significant” figures. And it looks like they will need them all. When I first saw data a few years ago the pH was lower by … 0.1. That is, no change since then in spite of the “acceleration” reported by the BBC.

More work for Anthony, pictures of pH meters, expiry dates of buffers …

Francois O (13:31:35) :”…In particular, the real big riddle is not that CO2 rises with temperature, but how it can get so low when it’s cold. Models simply can’t explain it…while the ocean and the melting ice may release CO2, the growing forest will take it up, and thus limit the growth of CO2. However, when the cold sets in again, the dying forest should, in principle, release all that stored CO2, keeping the concentration high. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here, as CO2 stays high while temperature drops…

i’ve seen logs that are 200 million years old. Admittedly, there’s not much carbon left in them, but the point is that wood doesn’t decay very fast, especially if it becomes buried in sediment where air can’t get to it. As temperatures drop, the oceans will (re)adsorb the CO². This is a contact-area-limited, mass-transfer process and should, I think, be an order of magnitude slower than the degassing process. Note: If it gets cold enough (~ minus 80°C) at the poles, CO² will snow in winter, just like on Mars. Vostok Base reached −89.2 °C in 1983. How cold did the poles get on the historic T downslope, and how fast?

I am no scientist, merely a fascinated observer, thankful for, and in awe of the analyses presented in your pages, but surely, step back and look. Which precedes which is irrelevant. You have a clear roughly 100,000 year natural cycle of warming and cooling, of which none could possibly be attributed to man. Game over.

We happen to be living during the upper part of an up-slope, but the time scales are immense, so zoom-in on the slope and expand the lifetime of the average man you are bound to see a ragged, and more likely than not, overall very gradual increase.

I am all for cleaning up the environment and less waste of resources, but AGW has become a tax-raising convenience for politicians and a milch cow, for green groups and some sections of the scientific and business communities who are either stupid or, wickedly, continue the charade for personal gain.

P2O2 (15:15:12) :
1) when the Earth switched over from the Hot to the Freeze epoch, and why?
2) how much closer to the Sun the Earth should be now to be in a state of climatic equilibrium favorable to us (with summer/winter cycles and w/o glacial/interglacial periods)?

Well, those are good questions. The basic problem is that we are trying to think about geologic time scale events with human time scale values. Their are randomizing impacts on the whole process that make it +/- thousands of years error band. So we might have entered a cooling phase 10,000 years ago, or it might take another 10,000 to get going. Why? Take a look at:

It does a pretty good treatment. Down at the bottom you will notice a part about present conditions. The estimates range up to 10’s of thousands of years from now to start. I’d put my money on the past that shows the peaks don’t last long. If I had to bet my beer money, I’d bet that AGW is good and put the brakes on the ice age that already began in the Little Ice Age. We were on our way, and it stopped. But that’s a beer bet ;-)

Per #2: It’s not just closer. The pole ‘tip over’ is important (it has to be tipped over more so the N.pole gets a hotter summer), pole tip has to be timed such that it’s pointed at the sun during summer at the same time the earth is closest to the sun in it’s orbit, and the orbit has to be of the right ‘out of roundness’ to make that happen at a warmer, closer time. That we had those conditions enough to get us out of the last ice age says that they are already changing to a ‘worse’ condition. But the good news is that even the fastest of these is on a 19,000 year cycle: So don’t sell your ski cabin just yet!

On another thread I pointed out that the ice accumulation is more or less a straight line. For the next ice age glaciers to reach NYC will take about 100,000 years, so measuring from the Arctic ice cap that works out to about 800 FEET per year. Not exactly the stuff for Hitchcock movies…

But the bottom line is that we want answers precise to decades, when nature is working on a 10,000 year scale. We just can’t know that precisely.

The post is disheartening. I sincerely hoped that increased atmospheric CO2 would stave off the coming glaciation. Based on Lansner’s analysis, however, it appears that increasing CO2 emissions won’t do diddly.

Glaciations are no fun. Warmer is Better. It appears that Science, if it is to be useful, will have to find some other climate driver we can utilize to keep the globe bathed in perpetual interglacial warmth.

Huh? I see only a scale relative to some baseline. Frank did use Kelvins instead of degrees Celcius, but that’s perfectly reasonable and even preferable.

> Second human trick: Years are a human construction. If there is a signal
independent of human activity, setting the peak points of the signal as
zero points is valid idea. (No humans were around in the past to change
CO2 concentrations, so this is valid).

Except for figure 1, he did that. BTW, aren’t years an astronomical construction? Various popes and astronomers have spent a lot of time trying to sync calendars with Earth’s orbit. The Gregorian calendar at 365.2424 days is pretty good, but the Russian one at 365.2422 days is even better.

> This is basically the same trick as
describing a circle as having pi radians instead of 360 degrees.
The notion of 360 degrees is an arbitrary human assignment.

> The mathematics here end up being a lovely non-Cartesian,
non-Euclidean sinusoidal geometry. You can take advantage of commutativity and associativity of the data, and the graph falls right out
of the data. The asymmetry of the data when plotted on a sinusoidal
geometry is EXACTLY consistent with elliptical orbits. If you apply
Kepler’s laws and Occam’s Razor, variations in CO2 here on earth
are associated with the sun’s orbit in the galaxy.

It looks more like a sawtooth than something I’d expect from an elliptical orbit, even one with an extremly high eccentricity. You’ve rendered Kepler and Occam speechless, which will be proven when they don’t post here.

> Oh, and it looks like we all better move to warmer parts of the earth.

foinavon (15:15:46) :
Gribbin and Gribbin is a very nice book. But it is a book by science populizers describing 10 year old and more science from a time before much of the polar ice core data was available or had been analyzed in detail.

Ah yes, the ‘attack the messenger’, appeal to authority, and endless flogging of ‘only peer reviewed counts – especially if it is our reviewers’ begins. BORING.

I don’t give one whit about your endless flogging. Milankovitch has not been falsified and the book is an attainable read for the average person. Truth has no expiration date and beauty of writing has no shelf life.

@Mary Hinge (15:24:54) :
Oh Mary :-) I was afraid that I was the only sceptic blogwriter on Watts that would not have you say something bad about me. I would not feel that I had been on Watts without a little dose Mary Hinge! Thanks.

Then this La Nina talk of yours: Hmm as far as I remember, you thought there would be an El Nino in dec 2008? I said La Nina… and we got La Nina… not huge, but…?? And NOAA predicted moderate La Nina..

Well if this is “what you got on my person”, i suppose it could be worse :-))

You write: “He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.”

Anyways, You write as though you have learned much. Then enlighten us, what is it you actually think of the subject? How about commenting the subject also?

Michael .. an interesting thought but I think you are forgetting the law of partial pressures. Remember the phoney device where you resealed a half empty pop bottle then pressurized it with air to keep it carbonated, guess what the CO2 still came out of solution because of the law of partial pressures. You have to think of a way to maintain the physical pressure on the contained ice sample to keep the gasses in solution. The paper I quoted by J.J.Drake actually age dated the O2 in the ice and CO2 using the 18O concentration and they found a difference of between 1000 and 7000 years with the CO2 level dropping as the age difference increased.

The changes in CO2 concentration is better explained through absorption by the oceans rather than plants.

A cooler ocean absorbs more CO2 and to change the numbers by 100 ppm, the deep oceans needs to be fully in play as well since the surface does not have enough volume to account for the change.

For the deep ocean to become fully in play, an entire over-turning of the Thermohaline Ocean Circulation is required which just happens to take about 800 to 1000 years – just the right timeline.

When CO2 drops to 200 ppm and 180 ppm, grasses become the dominant plant species since they can still grow efficiently at these levels while most bushy plants and trees can’t. During the ice ages, the giant grass herbivores become the dominant species as well not surprisingly. So there is still vegetation processes going on during the deep ice ages (just not under the ice of course).

I suspect that the rises and drops in the CO2 steady states are due to changes in the biotic CO2 influxes. When it gets colder, the ability of plants to fix CO2 drops. This is more pronounced at altitude and as you near the poles.
Let use take a mountain. Trees and plants grow up to the tree line, mineralization and trapping carbon in the soil.

When it gets colder, the treeline drops a thousand feet. The result is less CO2 being fixed; hence a higher steady state level of CO2.

Now we have a warming spell. The ice melts and the frozen top soil is carried down the mountain. It takes many centuries for the trees to begin their climb up the mountain, VERY slowly. First lichen colonize the rocks, then moss, then grass, than scrub, and only after a long time can trees gain a purchase. The carbon is only rapidly fixed in a diverse and mature ecosystem, and in this context you might want to take note that there is more living organic matter below the surface of the soil than there is above it. The mass of a tress roots is greater than its branches.

Mary Hinge (15:24:54) said:
“He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.”

It appears that the CO2 advocates are more likely to believe in a single simplistic cause for recent warming. Although they give a quick mention to the myriad of factors affecting climate, they do an about face and point to the linear correlation of CO2 and temperature over the past 30 years as their main proof. They ignore time periods when the relationship is not linear.

The explanations for the lag time by “climate scientists” at RealClimate offer explanations that are the height of simplicity not to mention half-baked as they only addresses the period of rising temperatures. Frank’s analysis here is much more in depth, and in my opinion more accurate.

I cut out a part of the Article as it was too speculative.
I think that if the earth “only” akkumulated warmth in the oceans, its still a little hard to explain 20-25.000 years of cooling. Oceans take 1000-1500 years to mix. So here is the uncut pure speculation part I believe its ok to put it in a blog entry, and many seems to talk about these things today:

One hypothesis: Due to these findings among others, I find it rather likely that it the suns magnetic field causes slight friction of the Fe containing mantle under the earths crust. This friction would cause heat. This way the sun might also generate heat from below the surface of earth. If so, we might see higher volcanic activity in periods with high solar activity, and thus it is even easier to explain why CO2 compared to temperature is raising faster than it drops.

If so, then it is not only the earth oceans that are heated up in warmer periods, it is also in some regions layers of rock. It would take long time to cool down, and the shape of the Antarctic temperature data (Fast rising temperature, slower cooling) seems to fit well. Especially one would expect that a longer warming period of the earth would result in a slower cooling period afterward due to accumulated heat in ocean and rock:

Fig 8.
Again, this fits very well with Vostok data: Longer periods of warmth seems to be accompanied by longer time needed for cooling of earth.

The differences in cooling periods now have a logical explanation. The differences in cooling periods does not in any way support that it is CO2 that slows cooling phases. CO2 should have same effect on all cooling phases.

Michael D Smith (16:15:39) : I can’t think of a device with which to do that off hand, but…

Drilling mud is used to maintain pressure at depth in gas and oil wells to prevent blowouts. I think maintaining pressure is ‘a solved problem’. All you need is a drill bit that has a sealable pressure vessel on the end. Not sure how to do that one…

Nope, I know about partial pressures… I was imagining just such a device that could drill in a highly pressurized condition and contain the ice in that state, with the sample being released in lab conditions later. The sample would be small and would probably be a one-shot per core since the entire thing would outgas as soon as the pressure is released, but, it still might be useful if such an apparatus could be made. But imagining one and designing such a device I suppose is an entirely different matter… Good info to have if you could really capture the ice without so many of the sampling errors that plague the science… I can’t remember the reference, but there are some great articles on the many obstacles to getting reliable ice core data – even then it’s iffy. There is probably a good physical reason why nobody has captured much ice with high CO2 levels, yet…

E.M.Smith (16:35:15) :
P2O2 (15:15:12) :
1) when the Earth switched over from the Hot to the Freeze epoch, and why?
2) how much closer to the Sun the Earth should be now to be in a state of climatic equilibrium favorable to us (with summer/winter cycles and w/o glacial/interglacial periods)?

P2O2, I took your questions to mean “what would stop our present Interglacial from becoming a glacial” when an equal interpretation could be “We are in an Ice Epoch of multiple glacial / interglacial cycles; what would get us out of the whole Epoch?”

If the second of those was your question, then the answer seems to be “We are already on our way”. We have transited a galactic arm (that even correlates with a time lag with ice epochs) and our present ice epoch is on the way out. Unfortunately, it could take a few millions years to do so… Geologic time scales are, um, er, different ;-)

for more on that. There is a particularly nice graph a ways down showing galactic arms, ice epochs, etc.

Unfortunately, by the time anything of interest happens all of human civilization will be long gone, either from our extinction or because we are still subject to evolution and will have become something else! Aren’t geologic time scales fun?

This is a brave attempt by Frank but is basically an intensely simplistic argument with no grasp of the complexities involved. …. He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.

————
Well, Geez. I normally look past these kinds of comments, but I’ll ask on the off chance that there’s something more here. I don’t mind listening to what anyone has to say, as long as it’s more than name calling.

OK – so can you, Mary, give me one other dimension to consider that would disrupt the logic in Frank’s post so that his discussion becomes less meaningful? Seriously – people worried about CO2 have little evidence of a CO2 generated problem other than this ice core data and overly simplistic climate models. I guess I find it strange that the only actual evidence used in Gore’s movie to prove that CO2 causes devistation is now considered way too simple minded to be of any value whatsoever.

That’s a fair point. There’s no doubt that the ice core data is smoothed in the time domain due to the diffusion of air during the process of “sealing off” of the trapped air in cores. So the air in cores is always a bit younger than the ice that encloses it and the composition of the air is smoothed over significant periods.

However we can make some conclusions about the nature of smoothing. We know that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are pretty constant over decades. After all we’ve got a large amount of very detailed CO2 data for over 50 years. We can observe smooth rises due to the massive release of our emissions into the atmosphere. But the CO2 levels simply don’t jump around up and down willy-nilly. We can see that they don’t since we’ve been monitoring them for many decades! And there’s no physical mechanism that might give rise to massive jumps or drops of CO2 over short periods other than terrestrial impacts into limestone-rich deposits (like the end-Cretaceous impact) or truly awesome forest fires and such-like…

So the fact the we can look at the ice cores and observe a very regular glacial-interglacial-glacial transition from close to 180-270-180 ppm back and forth gives us confidence that we’re monitoring real transitions in atmospheric CO2. We’e got rather high resolution cores for the past 2000 years (Law Dome) that again indicate that CO2 levels don’t jump around much at all.

How about the temperature profile? I’m not sure I agree with you that temperatures rise that much up and down due to natural variation without very significant extraneous forcing. The paleoproxy data, averaged globally or hemispherically, over the last 1000-1500 years before the early 20th century indicate otherwise.

However one swings it, glacial-interglacial transitions over the last few cycles covering 350,000 years gives a rather consistent set of data showing very, very slow temperature rises encompassing ~ 5 oC of global warming over 5000ish years and an increase of atmospheric CO2 of 180-270 ppm over the same period. No doubt there was some significant temperature “noise” during these transitions (we can see some of these very clearly in the cores- e.g. Dansgaard–Oeschger events in the very high Northern latitudes!).

On top of that, the U.S. government is requiring automakers to make cars that very few people can afford or even want. Pretty soon we’ll have a new auto company, Obama Motors!

Isn’t it communism when the central government gets to decide what must be manufactured?

The next politician who, like Al Gore, tells you that the Earth is facing a global warming calamity because of greenhouse gas emissions, should be voted out of office and into the nearest soup kitchen line.

“It’s irrelevant what ELSE may cause temp rise/fall, the point of Frank Lansner’s piece was that CO2 is NOT the primary driver of temperature and other effects can and do overwhelm CO2’s forcing. So identifying other factors does not refute this.”

and Jim Steele (17:00:55) :

“The explanations for the lag time by “climate scientists” at RealClimate offer explanations that are the height of simplicity not to mention half-baked as they only addresses the period of rising temperatures.”

Guys, read the Hansen et al article (Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231). They show that CO2, though not the only driver during Milankovitch glacial/nonglacial cycles (albedo and methane are also used), precisely DOES affect climate with the same sensitivity we see during the past half century and, furthermore, the “lowering” temperatures are also explained well. So, adding 100 ppm to today’s climate does make a difference and, again, this difference is consistent with its partial role during the Pleistocene. What AGW proponents do NOT claim, despite what you say, is that CO2 is the only driver throughout geologic history.

Bill Illis (16:53:11) :
The changes in CO2 concentration is better explained through absorption by the oceans rather than plants.

Um, has not the ocean plants? I see the two topics (plants and oceans) as joined at the hip and not separable…

BTW, I have this nagging suspicion that the differential heats of water, vaporization, and crystallization ought to come into this somehow… just can’t put my finger on it. Faster warming from heat out of ocean as steam / vapor? Slower in from heat transport as water? Heat transport from ice absorbing 80 cal / gm from rain at 1 cal / gm. Anyone here a ChemE? They deal with these heat transport problems all the time…

Milankovitch has not been falsified and the book is an attainable read for the average person. Truth has no expiration date and beauty of writing has no shelf life.

E.M. all of my posts on this thread are entirely consistent with our understanding of Milankovitch cycles. I can’t imagine how you could think otherwise! To be entirely clear, there is very little doubt that the Milankovitch cycles involving achingly slow changes in insolation patterns are the primary drivers of the ice age cycles. I hope we’re not going to disagree on that basic point!

I agree that the book is a fine one. I said so before. However it’s a bit out of date. The beauty of writing indeed has no shelf date (very nicely put btw!). However scientists (and science publicizers that write books) are forced to recognize that all scientific knowledge is conditional and subject to modification/reinterpretation as knowledge advances. Our understanding of glacial transitions in 2000 was simply not so well advanced as now, since much of the spectacular coring was obtained and published after that period…

..in science we should be basing our understanding on knowledge as it advances, even if we should also maintain an interest in aesthetics…

Robert Wood (16:58:59) :
Ultimately, whatever the science or facts or arguments or models and equations, I am with English Phil (16:35:08) :

Clearly temperatures have fluctuated in the past; so what’s the big deal now?

Oh, I’d guess about a $Trillion+ taken from your pocket and put into the Friends of AlGore & Hansen fund… starting with the recent $140 Million minimum with much more to come. At least, that’s the big deal to me 8-\

If CO2 was a leading driver in atmospheric warming then we would expect to see a gradual warming lagging CO2 rise and then a continued rise of CO2 as the warming oceans released CO2. This would lead to a warmer atmosphere and the cycle would continue and so on …..

Excellent. It is exactly this analysis that made me a skeptic when I was teaching Global Warming to my students.

Exactly the ‘not understoody why’ that I saw in the UCSD course.
If I remember right, it was a mystery. Why does the CO2 lag temp rise when coming out of Ice Age?
I suspect that melting Ice Caps help keep the upper layers of the oceans cold and enable it to retain the CO2 in solution.
When cooling after a Warm Period, the upper layers of the oceans readily take on CO2, but would they sink or stay afloat (a density question)?
Anyone?

“Although the Antarctic ice cores indicate that the rise in atmospheric CO2 lags warming in Antarctica, the Greenland cores indicate that Greenland warming follows the rise in CO2. So the rise in atmospheric CO2 during ice age transitions (glacial –> interglacial) is both a consequence and a cause.”

It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, isn’t it? I think what you’ve pointed out is a correlation. Now what could be the lurking variable in this case? I’d say you discovered the, wait for it, ocean!. CO2 is well mixed, no? If as you say the SH oceans warmed first, then the rise in CO2 from the SH ocean mixes in the atmosphere long before the ocean heat reaches Greenland.

Thus the warming in Greenland was due to the warmer ocean even if a rise in CO2 preceded it and may have had a slight effect.

Thanks for pointing out the D-O cycles. I hadn’t seen that before. I don’t know how to translate O18 to temperature, but the correlation is there, and obviously something significant was going on there! That looks like a heck of lot of variation to me, especially compared to the more recent past.

To my earlier point, these recent cores will record much higher detail than the older ones. It’s not so much an effect of trapping air, it’s that the gases actually are in solution in a semi-permeable material. Granted, the diffusion process is very slow, but given enough time, the gases will move through the ice after being trapped from one layer to adjacent layers, thus smoothing the signal, with the rate being proportional to the differences in concentrations between layers or sections. Newer ice will show a more jagged signal than older ice due to this effect (and on the time scales we are talking about, it means the diffusion process is very slow). This doesn’t mean necessarily that more recent climate has more signal, it has less loss of signal… I’ll bet these same jagged O18 signals were present in the longer time scale cores (same climate phenomena present), but have been washed out over time. Speculation, no data… Interesting stuff…

In reply to E.M. Smith and P202: Right now Earth is nearest the sun during northern winters, farthest from the sun during northern summers. If E.M. Smith’s theory is correct, we’re headed for another ice age in the near future.

foinavon (14:31:43) in reply to me basically argues that CO2 can have some warming effect. I never doubted it. But the amount of CO2 warming deduced by foinavon himself is a good deal lower than the impression created by Gore in his movie. That is my point.

Your method of data aggregation invalidates the analysis. These are serial, and serially correlated data. They are not independent, replicated data points. Moreover, none of the relationships you seek to explain, e.g. solar insolation, CO2 conc. and global temperature are linear relationships. The CO2 lag is one that developed as the glacial-interglacial cycles proceeded from their approximate initiation 2.4 million years ago. This is expected because CO2 is influenced by other factors, such as carbonate burial are recycling, and rates of erosion associated with, e.g. orogeny. None of this new. Observation of the lag is not new. It fits quite well with the temperature-greenhouse model, and this was recognized long before the problem of modern anthropogenic global warming was brought the to the attention of the broader scientific community.

In reply to E.M. Smith and P202: Right now Earth is nearest the sun during northern winters, farthest from the sun during northern summers. If E.M. Smith’s theory is correct, we’re headed for another ice age in the near future.

Which means that efforts to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere en masse will ultimately hasten the onset of another Ice Age. This is the part that really gets under my skin. They don’t understand the process yet, but are fully prepared to go through with the sequestration and climate cooling doomsday efforts.
Full speed ahead, boys, this ship is unsinkable !!

Although, on an earlier thread (cannot remember which one, but seems like maybe a couple of weeks ago), this was discussed. My sceptism as a Chemical Engineer is that CO2 absorbed into the ocean does not have the requisite conditions for effective mass transfer.

From a simplistic standpoint, if the 100 ppm increases in CO2 in the interglacial eras are associated with temperature increases of about 10C, then why haven’t we seen such a temperature rise in the 20th century as CO2 levels soared another 100 ppm? Why don’t the alarmists claim that rising CO2 levels are actually postponing another glacial period and should therefore be increased ? Personally, I believe that CO2 has very little to do with climate change but I wonder what Obama actually thinks when talking to Hansen and Gore on this issue.

In reply to E.M. Smith and P202: Right now Earth is nearest the sun during northern winters, farthest from the sun during northern summers. If E.M. Smith’s theory is correct, we’re headed for another ice age in the near future.

Thst shift is called the precession of the equinoxes and has a period of 26,000 years, not long enough the graphs in question here. In only 12,000 years the perihelion will be in July.

foinavon (14:31:43) in reply to me basically argues that CO2 can have some warming effect. I never doubted it. But the amount of CO2 warming deduced by foinavon himself is a good deal lower than the impression created by Gore in his movie. That is my point.

This is certainly true in the sense of the appearance from those graphs that Gore shows. However, when he quotes IPCC projections and such, those are done using the best estimates of the climate sensitivity…which I believe amount to CO2 being responsible for only about 1/3 of the temperature change seen between the glacials and interglacials (rising to about 40% of the temperature change once you add in the other greenhouse gases).

At least one way that the fraction of 1/3 is arrived at is by estimating the fraction of the contribution of the radiative forcing due to the change in CO2 levels between the glacial period and now to the total estimated radiative forcing between the glacial period and now. (The bulk of the rest of the forcing is understood to be from the change in albedo from the growing and shrinking ice sheets, with a smaller contribution from changes in aerosol levels in the atmosphere. The Milankovitch oscillations themselves cause very little net radiative forcing…They just change the distribution of the solar radiation hitting the earth, but this change is still very important since it is what is ultimately responsible for the ice sheets starting to grow or shrink.)

Since the radiative forcing due to CO2 levels is known to quite good accuracy, the only way to hypothesize that CO2 has much less of an effect is to come up with some big honkin’ radiative forcing that is being left out of this calculation…or is being vastly underestimated. I haven’t heard many suggestions for what such a large radiative forcing could be. (And, even then, you would still be faced with the fact that other independent empirical estimates of the climate sensitivity, such as those derived from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, also seem to favor about the same sensitivity as is obtained from looking at the change from glacial to interglacial conditions.)

From a simplistic standpoint, if the 100 ppm increases in CO2 in the interglacial eras are associated with temperature increases of about 10C, then why haven’t we seen such a temperature rise in the 20th century as CO2 levels soared another 100 ppm?

First, see what I wrote in my previous post…that CO2 is only believed to be responsible for about 1/3 of the rise. Second, the 10C change from ice cores is an estimate of the temperature change at at high latitudes and is roughly double what the global temperature change is believed to be. Third, as foinavon noted, some of the warming from the current very rapid rise in CO2 is still “in the pipeline”. And, fourth, the expected rise in temperatures from CO2 alone over the past 100 years has been offset to some degree by the cooling effects of pollutants (sulfate aerosols) [although admittedly, there are also some warming effects due to the other greenhouse gases].

Thank you so much for having a website dedicated to the truth. These past six months I have been reading have shaken me to the core. I feel like I have dropped down a rabbit hole, and I cannot believe anything the MSM tells me.
I once had a phisophy teacher state that the only valid reason to believe something is because it is true. As a child you may believe in Santa Claus. It makes you happy and you behave better. As an adult, you don’t believe in it because it is not true, even though believing in it might make you happy and better behaved.

Al Gore and others want people to believe in AGW because of the effect it has on people. It is to manipulate them into doing things they wouldn’t do otherwise. They view the net effect as good because it advances their agenda. It is the utter hatred and fear of the truth that has shocked me to the core. People do not want to know the truth, they hate you for it.
I love the truth, I would rather know the truth and find out I was wrong, then swallow a lie and believe I am right.
In the end, the truth wins, because they will huff and puff, but they cannot command the sun and the oceans to do their bidding. Thank you. Thank you for opening my eyes to world not matter how shockingly painful it has been.

I have read the Hansen et al article (Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231). It is not a scientific paper , but an advocacy paper for policy. Not too long ago the scientific community would not publish advocacy papers because it poisons your scientific objectivity. Too bad that has been abandoned.

There was no discussion that explains my criticism. Only a snow job from a blizzard of questionable caluclations. So perhaps Ron you can explain it for me.

Lets refer to Figure 5 in Frank’s post and look at the horizontal green line for experiment 1 representing 264 ppm. If CO2 is responsible for maintaining the temperature why is the same amount of CO2 only able to maintain a temperature that is 4 degree colder as we approach a glacial minimum? And if, as Hansen claims, that CO2 is he main driver, why at the same amount of CO2 is the temperature rising at A and then again falling at B?
You can’t have t both ways.

Since the radiative forcing due to CO2 levels is known to quite good accuracy, the only way to hypothesize that CO2 has much less of an effect is to come up with some big honkin’ radiative forcing that is being left out of this calculation

Why, certainly. The backing off of solar wind leading to increased cosmic rays which interact in the lower atmosphere in the UV to reflect off incoming sunlight and the 1/3 shrinkage of the upper atmosphere that equates to loss of “R” value. Ask Corning Insulation rep what “R” value means. Ask a Mars scientist what the thin CO2 atmosphere of Mars can hold vs incoming. Ask a Venus scientist what the thick CO2 atmosphere of Venus can hold vs incoming.
Since we are on C02 life support.

I don’t know if anyone else has commented on this. It is hard to read all the comments.

What I notice- and this is just from eyeballing Figure 1 – is how sharp the raise AND FALL is initially of the temperature. Then there seems to be an increase of temperature which is much different from the initial spike which in turn decays much more slowly until the next sharp upward spike in temperature. The CO2 rises and begins to fall sharply too, but is interrupted in its sharp fall by the secondary raise in temperature.

This is obscured in the subsequent figures – which show the temperature gradually tapering off.

Seems to me there are a number of mechanisms at play here. It is hard to work with the scale here, but I wonder if the oceans degassing might be a part of the second period of warming each cycle.

I would be interesting to play with this. Any way Frank that you could post the raw data for Figure 1? I went to the link you provided, but it seems on reading it that the data has been worked over in a number of ways.

I’ve been looking for the elusive CO2 data from the GISP2 ice core for quite a while. The files that I have seen only contain samples from cold periods during the last glacial period (lots of data points at 300ppm during cold periods). Seems rather hard to believe that no one has taken samples of CO2 from either GRIP or GISP2 during the interglacial. I would love to see a plot of temperature vs CO2. I would suspect it would be much more variable for the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere.

“I haven’t heard many suggestions for what such a large radiative forcing could be”

……..The sun maybe? lol!

Oh and I forgot to add to my other post,

CO2 is sequestered in the formation of calcium carbonate in our oceans, needed for most living things in the ocean. Clams, oysters, etc to build their shells. Something that’s been done for a billion years, give or take a billion.

Here we are sending up all these probes and satellites for Earth and the rest of the planets. Why not use the other planets to help us get a firm grip on the question of solar forcing via complicated mechanisms?
Do we see changes in other planets recently?
I suspect we do. Let’s solve for Earth.

Joel “Since the radiative forcing due to CO2 levels is known to quite good accuracy”
I have been searching for over 10 years for any scientific proof to support this statement if you have it please post it.
I have read many papers by eminent scientists which prove with meticulous mathematical precision the opposite to your statement. The justification for the formula F=5.35 ln(C1/C0) which is the one I assume you are referring to is 100% empirical and if you apply this formula to the individual periods over the past 130 years when the temperatures were rising then falling you will find the formula does not even begin to past the simplist validation test.
If you wish I can post this analysis since I have done the calculations.

But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?

The ignorance of the above statement is astounding. That it comes from a non-climate scientist – as so much anti-AGW “science” does – just reinforces the doubt that sentence alone engenders. That statement is akin to saying the study of genes is irrelevant to understanding traits.

And, pray tell, why is this great science not found in a science journal?

Now that we are done with what would be ad hominems were they not accurate, lets’ look at the rest of this “science”….

One problem: there is no science in the article. Do you people not know what science is? Taking others work and reinterpreting it no *doing* science. BTW, did anyone notice the CO2 line in the third graph was altered from the other two?

All this is is an exercise in opinion with zero research done to back it up. And the conclusions are silly. It pays lip service to CO2 having an effect, but just to pretend at objectivity. Claiming the argument is that CO2 drives temps is a strawman that ignores the nature, and the very meaning, of positive feedbacks.

The Milankovitch oscillations themselves cause very little net radiative forcing…They just change the distribution of the solar radiation hitting the earth

The 100,000 yr Milankovitch cycle delivers an estimated 25% reduction in TSI at its most elliptical point in the orbit cycle. And I cant help but remind everyone, this is another cycle brought to you by our friendly Jovian planets.

… If this were true, wouldn’t the oceans tend to dampen the leading edge (rise) in temperature as well? I’m assuming that the ocean absorbs heat at the same rate that it gives it up, but perhaps this is not the case.

There is an obvious explanation: Hot water rises. If the warming is taking place at the surface, warm water will tend to stay at the surface and get warmed further. When cooling happens, chilled water will tend to sink in many places, tending to leave warmer water on the surface. Atmospheric temperatures are affected by the surface of the water so the atmosphere is warmed by the warmest ocean water, not by the average temperature of all ocean water.

Surface ocean currents are wind-driven, so in some places warm water gets blown against the edges of continents just as it now does. Cold water upwells upwind of those flows, so there is a smaller surface area of cold water exposed to atmosphere than there is warm water. There will be downwelling at edges where warm water currents encounter cold (polar) conditions, but the warm water stays in contact with the atmosphere until the entire volume of the end of the current cools below the temperature of the underlying water. The entire surface tends to warm, while deep water is warmed at only a few places — places where the atmosphere cooled the water (and the atmosphere was warmed).

The sudden-rise behavior is consistent with either a global warming of the surface or with a few intensely hot underwater sources. Heating of the bottom of the ocean would tend to also heat the deep cold water, which is not consistent with the steep rise-steep fall tendency unless underwater heat sources are isolated enough to create plumes of hot water which reach the surface quickly enough to not warm most of the ocean. This seems unlikely (such sources would probably be due to geothermal heating which would leave several geological and chemical traces), so the sudden-rise behavior suggests widespread heating of the surface.

Re: barry moore (15:43:55) :I would like to point out that the assumption has been made that the ice core sample CO2 data is accurate. There are many eminent scientists in this field who challenge the accuracy of this data.
Is there a competing hypothesis for the CO2/other GHG peak in the earlier interglacial periods?

re: barry moore (16:06:12) :It does not. CO2 radiative forcing flattens out at about 50 ppm thereafter it has no effect on temperature reference Dr. John Nichol’s paper which in my humble opinion is the best analysis using the fundamental laws of radiation physics.
Link? I have searched for and not found experimental verification of the GHG theory. I recall reading one description of a very basic experiment that claimed that the CO2 green house effect damped out very quickly with length of column. Maybe this is so basic and long ago that no one points it out. Since we are dealing with very subtle effects, I hope that the underlying physics has a strong experimental basis.

re: Rob (17:40:04) :What AGW proponents do NOT claim, despite what you say, is that CO2 is the only driver throughout geologic history.
Do they claim that it is the primary driver? If not, what?

Hi Anthony – I frequently read the posts and comments on your site. Is there any way you can number the comments? I don’t have time to sit down and read them all in one sitting (plus they are always expanding), and it’s hard to find my place if I read some and then come back.

It’s entirely possible to have a positive feedback system where one state variable (e.g. CO2) lags another state variable (e.g. T). The fact there is a delay does not mean there is no link between them, so to use the delay as an argument against a mutual causal relationship is invalid. Presumably the driver of the system is neither of the state variables involved, so it is irrelevant whether one is triggering the other. For me the CO2/T graphs neither prove nor disprove causal relationships.

If CO2 and T do force each other, surely the positive feedback only ceases when levels are reached where the positive feedback gain ceases, and there is no more dependence. Otherwise the warming spike would continue. So if, as is argued by some, CO2 and T are mutually reinforcing coming out of an ice-age, then that is not an argument to indicate that they are currently affecting each other, because they should be in the “saturated” regions at their current levels.

If CO2 and T are the variables involved, what happened “suddenly” 3 million years ago to start the ice ages off? Surely the laws of physics did not change? The only possibility is continental drift, which cannot possibly affect the relationship between CO2 and T. Continental drift can only change the course of ocean currents, so ocean currents have to be a primary mechanism causing the ice ages.

I also had a symmetry argument against CO2/T relationship, but Jorgekafkazar has provided me with a reason why there may be asymmetry, with different rates for degassing and re-gassing.

Thank you for this analysis. I have sent this to all on my email list.

Question:
Isn’t the anthropogenic CO2 in our atmosphere a gnat on the windshield as compared to the volcanic activity on our planet? Isn’t that the real driver of CO2 concentrations and our contribution a drop in a very very large bucket? Doesn’t THAT make all this futile exercise? Not to mention that water vapor is a more important green house gas than CO2

Robert Bateman (20:41:04) :Why, certainly. The backing off of solar wind leading to increased cosmic rays
The station best suited to observe the cosmic rays is Thule very close to the geomagnetic pole. Here is the last 40+ years of Neutron Counts at Thule: http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png As you can see there has been no long-term changes in cosmic rays over that time. The count at every solar minimum always returns to the same value [with a very small systematic – and understood – alternation between minima]. This minimum is no different. Here http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/realtime/thule.html#levels is a real-time plot. The bottom panel is the count to compare with my plot. We are just now seeing the minimum values play out as the cosmic rays lag solar activity by 6 months or so [it takes 12 months for the solar wind to go from the Sun to the heliospheric boundary]. In assessing the long-term trend, one can see that it is much smaller than the solar cycle variation, so if the solar cycle variation gives us a barely noticeable [0.1 degree] effect due to cosmic rays, then the effect from the much smaller trend is correspondingly smaller.

@Mike Bryant (18:00:31) :
****
Mary Hinge (15:24:54) said:
“He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.”
Frank, Mary will be giving classes on three AND four dimensional climate science processes. Be sure to sign up for the classes. You must learn.
****
Yes, i also now have this vision of these weather people are simply 4-dimensional people in their own Einsteinish universe. My good, it must be hard to go through this examin for meteology! Much harder than the physics and chemistry i took as civil engeneer, im sure.

In Denmark we have H.C.Andersen, and he wrote about the emperor with no clothes. It only worked because the tailors assured everyone that the emperor indeed had clothes on. It was only the “simple people” that could not see this. And thus everybody says nothing…

It seems that the crowd of peoble just telling the obvious is getting bigger and bigger. Some day soon the emperor will be embarresed? And I would not like to be in the shoes of the tailor.
Its striking that nothing has changed since H.C. Andersen died.

foinavon (17:46:23) :
I agree that the book is a fine one. I said so before. However it’s a bit out of date. The beauty of writing indeed has no shelf date (very nicely put btw!). However scientists (and science publicizers that write books) are forced to recognize that all scientific knowledge is conditional and subject to modification/reinterpretation as knowledge advances. Our understanding of glacial transitions in 2000 was simply not so well advanced as now, since much of the spectacular coring was obtained and published after that period… ..in science we should be basing our understanding on knowledge as it advances, even if we should also maintain an interest in aesthetics…

@Foinavon: Your usage of English here shows some non-Anglicisms. Are you a non-native English speaker? If so, please forgive me. I’ve assumed otherwise. Do you have a preference?

I’m OK in Spanish & French (several years of formal classes in both), can read some German & Portuguese. I have a smattering of several others including Latin, Greek, Swedish & Norwegian and can ‘kind of’ pick out bits of Danish & Icelandic (but they use too many cases!) & Russian (which I took a class in but ‘had issues’…) Ido, Esperanto and Interlingue are relatively readable to me since they are roughly based on Romance principles. If you would prefer one of these (given my limitations!) please feel free to post in a bilingual format.

(The perils of being borderline Aspergers with an interest in languages… but I digress…)

Perhaps I have not understood you correctly due to a language issue… Do you have a preference? If it is not English, please, again, forgive me! (I’m a native speaker of English, but Spanish and French are close behind, and the Nordic languages have a historical affinity for me – family history includes Amish (German of a sort) and Irish (Gaelic is, er, not my best, but I’m working on it… )

But back to Ice Ages. Is it not a fact that every interglacial only happens when all the conditions are aligned such that the N. pole gets heat? Is it not the case that the S. pole can be in the ‘hot mode’ (precession, obliquity, eccentricity etc.) and we do not get an ice age?

It seems to me that as long as Milankovitch is shown true, we are sitting on a ledge of ‘just past the peak of an interglacial’ and waiting to fall off. In that context, I see little to fear from AGW and in fact, think it may well be our saviour from a (literal!) Frankenstein outcome…

(Frankenstein was written during the Little Ice Age, and the introductory paragraphs are oriented toward a frozen hell of a world. The story was written as folks on holiday were faced with a terrible cold and snowy ‘vacation’ and decided to scare each other as a diversion from the cold that blighted their outing…)

Firstly, Frank has articulated much better what I have been posting for some time in a number of places-thanks Frank!

Regarding my conversation with you and Smokey on the other thread I need to put things into context as I originally shared your scepticism on variable co2 levels.

I first became interested in Beck after looking at co2 against past known Hadley CET to 1660 and became aware of higher and lower temps in the past.

This graph;

was created with the correct unsmoothed temperatures and correct time scales overlaid with IPCC co2 data-not to same scale- but graphed to greatly exaggerate the levels so time scales and variations could be better seen.

After looking at it my thoughts were that temperature rise preceded co2 increases and co2 seemed to have nothing to do with anything as temperatures have fluctuated greatly in the past at only 280ppm (ice cores) well before we came on the scene. Alternatively the ‘correct’ co2 levels were missing prior to 1958 and a constant 280ppm was wrong.

This graph

is to correct scales and introduced the levels of man made co2 (blue line at the bottom) and some previous readings (green dots) from Beck. All the co2 action seems to take place between around 260-370ppm after which perhaps the logarithmic effect made little difference to temperatures.

I became aware of Beck’s work and independently researched the history of co2 and discovered that taking readings was very common from around 1820 for a variety of purposes connected with measuring levels (for ventilation purposes) from mines to medical to factories. Agricola was aware of co2 2000 years ago, as was Florence Nightingale in the 1850’s who I believe took readings , together with thousands of scientists- some of them Nobel winners. These readings are available in a variety of documents from ‘Air and water’ in 1872 to Frances Benedict in 1912 and Giles Slocum in 1956. There is also a complete bibliography of references to readings.

I subsequently corresponded with Beck (who puts his work on the web in a manner that would shame certain IPCC scientists) and I subsequently closely examined a small number of readings as regards the person, methodology, equipment, circumstances and likely accuracy. The only conclusion I could come to was that although by no means all of the 90000 readings ( a fraction of those taken that remain) were accurate, a significant proportion could not be easily dismissed.

Taking co2 readings was commonplace in previous times and was mentioned in Gaskells ‘North and South’ and a UK Factories act was put in place in 1889 which set a limit in factories and mines, enforced by the relevant inspectorate. The British do not put in place legislation unless it can be enforced (and people fined!) After looking at the various methods used- including the Haldane analyser, it was impossible to conclude anything other than that previous levels prior to 1958 and back to the first reliable readings-Saussure in 1820-were similar to today.

Looking in detail at the politics of the situation and the belief system of GS Callendar and Charles Keeling -who in effect ‘decided’ that 280ppm was the pre industrial level without any proof whatsoever (other than the formers highly selective use of the measurements to support his own theories) I looked at the ice cores. This is a highly technical area and a new science open to wide interpretation of what a tiny number of cores are telling us, and to me is unconvincing .

I had much the same questions as you put to me over on the other thread. I answered them myself, then thought why not ask Ernst Beck to confirm my thoughts. His reply to me was far more detailed than mine so I have-with his permission reproduced them. I have seen the second document he mentions-but this is only generally available on payment. It adds a fair bit to our understanding but the new work he is compiling will be more comprehensive.

That Co2 flux and sources/sinks is a complex and largely unknown area is apparent-the idea that we are thinking of transforming our lifestyles and economy based on such flimsy evidence as has emerged so far claiming our supposed culpability is astonishing. I do not pretend to have the answers but two things remain that to me are unresolved.

Temperatures in the past have fluctuated greatly without the mechanism of co2 fluctuation, suggesting that at best it is a weak driver as evidenced by the constant ice core measurements. Or that co2 is some sort of driver-albeit still weak- and past levels have always fluctuated around modern levels. In this case blaming man and proclaiming doom and gloom seems misplaced.

I am further concerned that the ‘evidence’ for man made co2 being the cuplrit is based on highly theoretical and therefore unproven hypotheses backed up by computer models that even the IPCC say should not be relied on.

This is a long post so I will stop here and put up your original and highly pertinent objections shortly, together with the reply from Ernst Beck.

Ok, and we have a Mike Smith too… (Guess what the M stands for in E. M. Smith…) so it looks like we are ‘triple teaming’ them…

Reminds me of the time the company put out a “know your Mike Smith ” edition of the company newspaper…(there were 5 of us!)

For what it’s worth, there has been one Mike Smith for each 2000 of working population at every company at which I have worked.

Thanks for pointing out the D-O cycles. I hadn’t seen that before. I don’t know how to translate O18 to temperature, but the correlation is there, and obviously something significant was going on there! That looks like a heck of lot of variation to me, especially compared to the more recent past.

To my earlier point, these recent cores will record much higher detail than the older ones. It’s not so much an effect of trapping air, it’s that the gases actually are in solution in a semi-permeable material. Granted

I am tired of epicycles. This note is going to generate even more of them in order to turn the Temperature/CO2 correlation into a plausible cause: CO2 effect:temperature rise.

Nobody disputes there is a correlation, it is the direction and the magnitude of the role of CO2 in temperature rising that is crucial for AGW climate models that is at risk here.

It is instructive to think of the epicycles: Scientists of that time added more and more epicycles as more and more planetary objects were discovered. They were discarded when the causative arrow became clear, planets go around the sun and not the sun around the earth. Even now, if you take a geocentric system, epicycles will appear, but what is their use except in astrology ( a correlation is causation industry too)?

Scientists should aim for the clear, simple and illuminating explanation. This post helps in this direction.

I think it is time for real scientists in the climate community to take stock and decide that the GCM models do not work: CO2 is dominantly effect and not cause, there are no errors with the scenaria,(1) just fuzzy logic, the tropospheric temperatures do not behave, except if one presumes large errors, temperatures have plateaued It seems the PDO etc ( storing and releasing heat) together with changes in albedo ( the Plame plot) can simply describe what we see as global temperatures.

CO2/water feedback was an interesting hypothesis that has not panned out. A true scientist lets go, and looks for the next challenge ( I would suggest models like Tsonis et al are building).

In my field, Particle Physics, we had the really great scientist Feynman sticking to his parton model for quite a while. He had to give in to QCD, in the end . Data said differently and he accepted it.

*******

(1) Only a 1 sigma change in the assumed albedo of the GCM models will make a 1C error about any scenario line

“In Denmark we have H.C.Andersen, and he wrote about the emperor with no clothes. It only worked because the tailors assured everyone that the emperor indeed had clothes on. It was only the “simple people” that could not see this. And thus everybody says nothing…”

I believe that our only hope now is simple people with simple common sense. Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret.
Thanks for your work on this.
Mike

Where is this evidence that the CO2 rising preceeds warming in the north? If true it still doesn’t make sense because than the order would be South warms CO2 rises North warms. That wouldn’t be good evidence that CO2 was the cause of the warming more like CO2 has little to do with it.

In addition when I first saw the ice core data from Greenland at a presented paper in a 1990 ACS meeting this was not the case. In other words it was clear from the Greenland data as well that the warming had happened first though the time lag was less.

Please refer to my post of 00 31 16 and my reservations and caveats to put this current post into context. As I say I had composed a reply to your original questions, but after checking some details with Ernst Beck I felt his reply was much more comprehensive than mine so I have posted it with his permission.

Your very pertinent questions are in speech marks. Becks comments are not;

“Ok, I’ll run through my reservations with the Beck paper (E&E 2007) (with apologies to others for this being OT in respect of the original post).
1. Beck refers to 90,000 analyses of C02 since 1812. Of these, 64,000 were taken at Giessen (not Bremen, as I mistakenly said last night) over an eighteen month period. So, some 79% of the data from which he draws conclusions about global C02 concentrations over a 150 year period is from one location over 18 months.”

I have compiled from literature at the moment ~95 000 CO2 data from more than 300 000 analyses because of double to quadruple measurements and then averaging.

I do NOT draw global conclusions. All CO2 measurements near ground are local and also the so called background CO2 data are local for instance in about 4 km altitude (MLO) they differ in latitude and continent or marine location.

If we compare famous ice core data concerning CO2 e.g. Vostok 1999 (petit et al), we have 200 years. They all take them globally!

“2. Beck states that “The longest single time series was determined in Paris’ Montsouris laboratory, and comprises 12,000 measurements over the 30 years from 1876 until 1910″, but we don’t have any detail of these measurements beyond that. He then graphs details for four locations, none of which cover the same periods. I cannot see what validation of one location against another applies.

“Looking to my webpage http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm you can find every resources and information you will find.
I´m writing a large monograph concerning in detail all information on the historic measurements since 2006. At the moment I do statistical analysis of my data using Maximum Entropy Spectral Analysis and Wavelet Spectral analysis. I hope I have finished the discussion about the results soon so that I can implement the results in my monograph.
After that the whole thing will be published. My website, publications and presentations are parts of this work.

The four locations in my first paper are examples of very well done measuring series giving all necessary information to evaluate the data. More in my presentations and my second paper and the rest >140 in my monograph. It was not possible to do this in a 23 page paper.

The validation of one location against another is common in modern CO2 measurements. The WDCGG lists the data of the global network. If you compare the different locations you will see mostly the same data. But this is impossible because of very local data. E.g: CO2 on Mauna LOa ( ~4km volcano, no vegetation) or Schauinsland (1200 altitude, forested area, much vegetation) . The graphs are nearly identical. The explanation is a filtering of raw data and a statistical processing at both locations to get the predefined graph . At Schauinsland they had taken only the values at night, by the way. This is data picking to get the graph you want!!! All data are taken as globally important.

“My” historical data are near ground and typical for the vertical profile of CO2 in the atmosphere at that location. Near ground we have about 35-50 ppm seasonal variation on continent and about 12 ppm at an altitude of about 4 km (background). Please see here: http://www.purdue.edu/climate/pdf/Gurney%20Science.pdf
The averages in 4 km (background) and near ground (local influenced) are within about 4 ppm the same. Thats all. I will include a picture out of the chapter in my monograph on that issue. http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/surgut-hom.jpg

“3. Looking at the Kreutz/Gissen record as an illustration, we see very large variations in C02 measurements from one month to the next, e.g. c.300 to 430 between 9/39 and 10/39, and 340 to 550 over two months from 6/40 to 8/40. If such measurements were indeed representative of global CO2 concentration, then how could such quantities of C02 be moving in and out of the atmosphere at such a rate? This is equivalent to between a third and two thirds of all the CO2 contained in land plants globally. He refers to “monthly cycling” and suggests this is evident in Mauna Loa measurements, but not on that extraordinary scale! We have no evidence from ground observation or satellites to confirm such flux – are we to presume this is something that stopped happening in the 1950s?”

“(Perhaps the questioner) who asked this has no idea of the daily and seasonal variations of atmospheric CO2 at a real location. Real fluctuations during a day can be more than 100 ppm without human influence. It is simple vegetation or wind. Of course they are not globally representative. We should stop these crazy thinking of a global climate or weather. Neither temperature nor any other parameter locally measured is globally representative. This is the result of the Keeling procedure of filtering data, cutting the outliers and processing the data. Take a look at the temperature data (Giss or HADCRUT). They are processed every month the old and the new one to fit the ideas of rising temperatures because of global warming.
The oceans easily emit such high CO2 every year. A warm water current will release per 1°C warming up to 70 ppm more CO2. This had taken place in the Northern Atlantic ocean during the 30s.
The monthly cycling ( about 28 days) I have observed is the fingerprint of lunar phases and part of the lunar nodal cycle. We can see it in all CO2 series also MLO (see my website)
The only thing we have to do is spectral analysis of the CO2 data. Please ask the questioner why nobody has done this? I will give you the answer below.

“4. Seeing, then, the enormous and rapid variations in supposed global atmospheric C02 concentration as measured at Giessen and other locations, he then presumes that this can be fitted to the monotonic annual variation and steady rise in concentrations measured at Mauna Loa from the 1950s. How could this be plausible?”

“The answer is given above. The Giessen data are typical for Giessen, latitude ~ 50 on continent. MLO is typical for a volcano at 3800 m altitude in a marine surround. Please ask the questioner why they do not publish raw data from MLO with the volcanic degassing?
1950 there were a sudden drop in atmospheric CO2 which can also seen in other data series. During the 50s the CO2 is rising again, but not as MLO will pretend. CO2 was higher on continent.

“5. Even if the measurement stations were entirely free from any contamination from human influence, and even if they were representative of a geographically ‘averaged’ location (that is, free from natural variability), they would not be able to measure background CO2. You can’t do that reliably close to sea level, owing to variations in atmospheric mixing (consider the build up of smog at certain times), or at least you can’t do it meaningfully without being able to apply corrections for bias.”

No measurement station is free from “contamination”. This is the wrong term and given by the AGW prayers to dismiss typical natural fluctuations. Of course the Giessen data are not free from typical influence of humans, which was clearly outlined by Kreutz. (see here: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/localinf_giessen1939.jpg)
Of course they have not measured “background level” at Giessen. Background CO2 is a special atmospheric concentration on some marine stations and stations at higher altitudes (MLO) or by processing the real measured data to fit the background rules (e.g. Schauinsland, WDCGG). Background is not typical for the world because the atmosphere is not typically well mixed. But we can do a background estimation by the windspeed-CO2 test for not well mixed locations . ( see here: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/kreutz/kreutzwspapprox.gif and for modern stations (Diekirch Lux) see here: http://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/co2_patterns/co2_patterns.html.

“Beck is concerned to stress the accuracy of the instrumentation. I have no knowledge of that, so will take his word for it. But accuracy is of no use unless you know that you’re measuring what you want to be measuring.”

I have investigated the chemical methods in detail. If the English word “accuracy” is the wrong term please take the right one. The Pettenkofer method delivers a precision of +-1% of the reading value at it´ s best.”

I hope that is a good and straightforward reply to your very reasonable questions Simon. In my experience Ernst Beck is very willing to answer questions direct. Like me he does not pretend to have all the answers but I certainly believe our understanding of co2 levels and its behaviour is very limited at present, and that additional information will eventually come to light that will further question the established version of events.

Setting aside all the technical issues, what I find most disturbing — and revealing — about the pro-AGW crowd is the extent to which so many of them desperately WANT it to be true that mankind is facing an enormous disaster that will require us to abandon modern industrial technology and suffer a drastic reduction in our living standards. Many of them are positively SALIVATING over the prospect of seeing us shivering in the dark, with drastically curtailed travel privileges, severely rationed food and water consumption, draconian restrictions on electricity usage, etc.

Of course, there are some who buy into the fantasy that we can restrict CO2 emissions to the levels of 50 years ago and not suffer anything other than a mild inconvenience. But that’s just a story to assuage the fears of the less extreme members of the movement. The core believers — the Hansen’s, the Mann’s and their followers — would be absolutely emotionally devastated if some way were found to easily counter the effects of CO2 or if some evidence were uncovered that overwhelmingly and undeniably refuted the AGW claims.

I can’t imagine what sort of corruption of the soul can leave one hoping that mankind suffers such a calamity. I can only hope against hope that they will not succeed in convincing the rest of us to commit suicide for the sake of the mosquitoes, the polar bears and the snail darters.

Mike McMillan (16:06:06) :
Except that it is true.
300 lbs for the first inch, 600 lbs for the second, 900 lbs for the third inch.

Thanks for confirming your level of understanding of basic physics. If you are going to claim someone is wrong, you should try and provide supporting evidence.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law
(yes, I know wiki is not proof, but if you care, you can find a basic physics textbook)

First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that:

Quite rightly.

It’s exactly the same as with a horse and carriage. Something startles the horse into moving, and this sets the carriage rolling. But once the carriage has got under way, it thereafter drives the horse forward. When you see a horse and carriage careering down a road, you’re not seeing the horse “pulling” the carriage, but instead the horse desperately fleeing from the speeding carriage at its heels.

You see, carriages only need horses to give them a little nudge to set them rolling. After that the horses aren’t really needed at all, and just gallop along in front. The only reason the horses are there is so that when the carriage stops (e.g. for its passengers to buy some pizza or something), there’s something there to give it a nudge to start rolling again.

And this is why we have horseless carriages these days. It’s one of the great advances of our time that we have ended wholly unnecessary cruelty to horses. The modern motor car dispenses with the horse. But it still needs something to give it a nudge to start it moving. And this is what ‘starter motors’ do.

Frank Lansner, thanks for the post and all the efforts to help us clarify. I now have a new way of conceptualizing the cause:effect issue. From Figure 4 on, many minds should be jiggle and jogged; yes, the emperor is naked and we simple-people-Alice’s have been living in the rabbit’s hole. It is time for a breath of fresh air filled with all that life-giving CO2. Kudos to WUWT.

Rob (17:40:04) : Read the Hansen et al article (Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231). They show that CO2, though not the only driver during Milankovitch glacial/nonglacial cycles (albedo and methane are also used), precisely DOES affect climate with the same sensitivity we see during the past half century and, furthermore, the “lowering” temperatures are also explained well.
Rob, is it available free online? IMHO, something this important should not be paywalled. I’ve been pointed frequently to the RealClimate articles on the CO2 “amplification” but even they are, when I look closely, nothing but… hot air… assertions, no evidence. Whereas Frank’s composite graphs are powerful evidence, especially when you add the non-presence of the logarithmic effect (parallel lines).

Katlab (20:27:13) : These past six months I have been reading have shaken me to the core. I feel like I have dropped down a rabbit hole, and I cannot believe anything the MSM tells me.
Have you read my own story? Click on my name.

Frank, det er så godt å ser aktiv diskusjonen i Klimadebatt. Men det er vanskelig for meg å forstår!
I love your references to volcanic and seismic warming factors; have you also considered that the Sun itself might undergo periodic intensifications of warming that take more time to cool?

Its worth pointing out that Petit et al 1999, (Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica: Nature 399, p 429) actually provide an excellent overview of the Vostok data. Their postulation of the role of CO2 feedback forcing climate will not be the to taste of every reader of WUPT, but they do make many good observations.

Amongst those they argue that the CO2 rise at terminations is likely within error of aligning ice age and gas age and I happen to agree with that (there are large uncertainties in both). The time lag at terminations therefore is likely an artifact, but the time lag during cooling is very real, as this article points out.

Thank you so much for having a website dedicated to the truth. These past six months I have been reading have shaken me to the core. I feel like I have dropped down a rabbit hole, and I cannot believe anything the MSM tells me. …

I’m working on a presentation for a “State of the Climate” report, and I’d like to use your post in the public perception section at the end. Yours is one of the best comments since Lucy Skywalker stuck her head above the propaganda and took a new look at the scene.

I frequently read the posts and comments on your site. Is there any way you can number the comments? … it’s hard to find my place if I read some and then come back.

What I do in Firefox is to keep each article in a separate tab. When I have time to try to catch up (getting harder and harder) I’ll note the time stamp of the last posrt (e.g. your 22:23:22), type Ctrl-R to reload the page, then search (with ‘/’ or Ctrl-F) for the hh:mm part of the timestamp. Works pretty well, though there are a number of things WordPress (not Anthony) could do. If the timestamp had a link to itself, then we could just click on it for an update.

I gotta figure out a way to only read some of the posts for some of the articles, growth here is just swamping my free time.

Looking at the graphs it occurred to a mechanism that might explain them, it relies on heat from the planets core. As the planets core is hot there must be a flow of heat to the planets surface ( including the sea bed ). Given open water conditions this heat flow can probably be considered negligible but if all the sea surface becomes frozen, the ice would act as an insulating layer which would allow the oceans to become warmer. When the water temperature or some outside influence caused the ice to melt this would allow large amounts of water vapour in to atmosphere via tropical storms and create a large green house effect slowing the cooling of the oceans. When the oceans had lost sufficient heat they would freeze over again and the cycle would repeat. The length of the cooling would depend how much heat the oceans contained at the time of melting. Probably far to simple an explanation but worse than AGW.

I tried to post this here early this morning but it seems to have got lost, so here goes again. It relates to Ernst Beck and is the contunation of the discussion on the other thread.
Hopefully Frank and others can comment as well

This reply was in answer to a series of questions from Simon about Becks work. I had composed a reply to your original questions but after checking some details with Ernst Beck I felt his reply was much more comprehensive than mine, so I have posted his reply in full with his permission.

Simon’s very pertinent questions are in speech marks. Becks comments are not

“Ok, I’ll run through my reservations with the Beck paper (E&E 2007) (with apologies to others for this being OT in respect of the original post).
1. Beck refers to 90,000 analyses of C02 since 1812. Of these, 64,000 were taken at Giessen (not Bremen, as I mistakenly said last night) over an eighteen month period. So, some 79% of the data from which he draws conclusions about global C02 concentrations over a 150 year period is from one location over 18 months.”

I have compiled from literature at the moment ~95 000 CO2 data from more than 300 000 analyses because of double to quadruple measurements and then averaging.

I do NOT draw global conclusions. All CO2 measurements near ground are local and also the so called background CO2 data are local for instance in about 4 km altitude (MLO) they differ in latitude and continent or marine location.

If we compare famous ice core data concerning CO2 e.g. Vostok 1999 (petit et al), we have 200 years. They all take them globally!

“2. Beck states that “The longest single time series was determined in Paris’ Montsouris laboratory, and comprises 12,000 measurements over the 30 years from 1876 until 1910″, but we don’t have any detail of these measurements beyond that. He then graphs details for four locations, none of which cover the same periods. I cannot see what validation of one location against another applies.”

Looking to my webpage http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm you can find every resources and information you will find.
I´m writing a large monograph concerning in detail all information on the historic measurements since 2006. At the moment I do statistical analysis of my data using Maximum Entropy Spectral Analysis and Wavelet Spectral analysis. I hope I have finished the discussion about the results soon so that I can implement the results in my monograph.
After that the whole thing will be published. My website, publications and presentations are parts of this work.

The four locations in my first paper are examples of very well done measuring series giving all necessary information to evaluate the data. More in my presentations and my second paper and the rest >140 in my monograph. It was not possible to do this in a 23 page paper.

The validation of one location against another is common in modern CO2 measurements. The WDCGG lists the data of the global network. If you compare the different locations you will see mostly the same data. But this is impossible because of very local data. E.g: CO2 on Mauna LOa ( ~4km volcano, no vegetation) or Schauinsland (1200 altitude, forested area, much vegetation) . The graphs are nearly identical. The explanation is a filtering of raw data and a statistical processing at both locations to get the predefined graph . At Schauinsland they had taken only the values at night, by the way. This is data picking to get the graph you want!!! All data are taken as globally important.

“My” historical data are near ground and typical for the vertical profile of CO2 in the atmosphere at that location. Near ground we have about 35-50 ppm seasonal variation on continent and about 12 ppm at an altitude of about 4 km (background). Please see here: http://www.purdue.edu/climate/pdf/Gurney%20Science.pdf
The averages in 4 km (background) and near ground (local influenced) are within about 4 ppm the same. Thats all. I will include a picture out of the chapter in my monograph on that issue. http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/surgut-hom.jpg

“3. Looking at the Kreutz/Gissen record as an illustration, we see very large variations in C02 measurements from one month to the next, e.g. c.300 to 430 between 9/39 and 10/39, and 340 to 550 over two months from 6/40 to 8/40. If such measurements were indeed representative of global CO2 concentration, then how could such quantities of C02 be moving in and out of the atmosphere at such a rate? This is equivalent to between a third and two thirds of all the CO2 contained in land plants globally. He refers to “monthly cycling” and suggests this is evident in Mauna Loa measurements, but not on that extraordinary scale! We have no evidence from ground observation or satellites to confirm such flux – are we to presume this is something that stopped happening in the 1950s?”

(Perhaps the questioner) who asked this has no idea of the daily and seasonal variations of atmospheric CO2 at a real location. Real fluctuations during a day can be more than 100 ppm without human influence. It is simple vegetation or wind. Of course they are not globally representative. We should stop these crazy thinking of a global climate or weather. Neither temperature nor any other parameter locally measured is globally representative. This is the result of the Keeling procedure of filtering data, cutting the outliers and processing the data. Take a look at the temperature data (Giss or HADCRUT). They are processed every month the old and the new one to fit the ideas of rising temperatures because of global warming.
The oceans easily emit such high CO2 every year. A warm water current will release per 1°C warming up to 70 ppm more CO2. This had taken place in the Northern Atlantic ocean during the 30s.
The monthly cycling ( about 28 days) I have observed is the fingerprint of lunar phases and part of the lunar nodal cycle. We can see it in all CO2 series also MLO (see my website)
The only thing we have to do is spectral analysis of the CO2 data. Please ask the guy why nobody has done this? I will give you the answer below.

“4. Seeing, then, the enormous and rapid variations in supposed global atmospheric C02 concentration as measured at Giessen and other locations, he then presumes that this can be fitted to the monotonic annual variation and steady rise in concentrations measured at Mauna Loa from the 1950s. How could this be plausible?”

The answer is given above. The Giessen data are typical for Giessen, latitude ~ 50 on continent. MLO is typical for a volcano at 3800 m altitude in a marine surround. Please ask the questioner why they do not publish raw data from MLO with the volcanic degassing?
1950 there were a sudden drop in atmospheric CO2 which can also seen in other data series. During the 50s the CO2 is rising again, but not as MLO will pretend. CO2 was higher on continent.

“5. Even if the measurement stations were entirely free from any contamination from human influence, and even if they were representative of a geographically ‘averaged’ location (that is, free from natural variability), they would not be able to measure background CO2. You can’t do that reliably close to sea level, owing to variations in atmospheric mixing (consider the build up of smog at certain times), or at least you can’t do it meaningfully without being able to apply corrections for bias.”

No measurement station is free from “contamination”. This is the wrong term and given by the AGW prayers to dismiss typical natural fluctuations. Of course the Giessen data are not free from typical influence of humans, which was clearly outlined by Kreutz. (see here: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/ … en1939.jpg)
Of course they have not measured “background level” at Giessen. Background CO2 is a special atmospheric concentration on some marine stations and stations at higher altitudes (MLO) or by processing the real measured data to fit the background rules (e.g. Schauinsland, WDCGG). Background is not typical for the world because the atmosphere is not typically well mixed. But we can do a background estimation by the windspeed-CO2 test for not well mixed locations . ( see here: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literat … approx.gif and for modern stations (Diekirch Lux) see here: http://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/co2_patterns … terns.html.

“Beck is concerned to stress the accuracy of the instrumentation. I have no knowledge of that, so will take his word for it. But accuracy is of no use unless you know that you’re measuring what you want to be measuring.”

I have investigated the chemical methods in detail. If the English word “accuracy” is the wrong term please take the right one. The Pettenkofer method delivers a precision of +-1% of the reading value at it´s best.”

In his reply above Beck makes mention of several documents that I have seen but are not yet in the public domain.

In my experience Ernst Beck is very willing to answer questions. Like me he does not pretend to have all the answers but I certainly believe our understanding of co2 levels and its behaviour is very limited at present and that new information being compiled will question further the established version of events.

Frank, one of your volcanic URL’s seems to be a right fraud, we’ve just had some fun exploring here. Upshot is, it’s as I thought, no recent seismic activities increase, rather, the correlation appears to be with solar low activity.

I am sorry if someone has pointed this out before. It is a long blog I may have missed it. To those who argue that temperature and CO2 look as though they peak together I would point out that even if this was true (which is not to my eye) it would not matter. If CO2 was the driver one would expect the peak in CO2 to correlate with the maximum rate of change in temperature, not temperature per se. In other words it would be good to plot a derivative (as has been pointed out already) but only for temperature. For me the killer argument is that the same level of CO2 is consistent with both rapidly rising and rapidly falling temperatures. As was pointed out in the (brilliant) original this proves that any contribution from CO2 is swamped by other factors.

There is one further thought however and it is not impossible. What if CO2 is a coolant? The reason for mentioning this is that CO2 is indeed a coolant in the stratosphere. I believe it is the most important one (but i stand to be corrected). The concept of increasing levels of CO2 contibutiing to warming is based on the concept that higher concentrations reduce the mean free path of photons in CO2’s absorption band and increases the altitude at which molecules can radiate into space. Since higher altitude means lower temperature less is radiated and therefore the surface has to increase in temperature to compensate. However this is only true if the radiating band is below the tropopause. Whilst Hadley state that this is the case I have satellite pictures which seem to show that the radiation is mainly in or even above the tropopause. Can someone put me right on this. If this radiation layer is below the tropopause for low concentrations and above it for higher concentrations one could actually get the forcing changing sign.

I have tried twice today to post a long item from Ernst Beck which is a reply to Simon Evans and a continuation of my post-00 31 16

Has it got caught in a spam filter or does it reject items over a certain length? Your help is appreciated.

TonyB

Reply: There are only two people moderating, and at times there is no coverage, so comments remain in the queue. Your comments are now posted. My apologies, I will try to check in more often. ~ dbstealey, mod.

The hypothesis of CO2 “warming” is a bit silly when one considers all the heat transfer mechanisms available to the atmosphere.

Increasing the levels of CO2 has a tiny effect that probably (on balance) enhances the atmosphere’s ability to accept and to transport heat from hot spots to cold ones.

If you look at the cooling system of a car, the coolant moderates temperatures throughout because it is flowing. As does the atmosphere. If you stop the coolant flow, then you quickly get (over-)heating.

Improve the ability of the coolant to accept and to reject heat, and temperatures are moderated even further; hot spots get less hot, and cooler spots would tend to get slightly warmer; but only if the heat hasn’t already been lost before it gets to them; the coolant getting slightly warmer at the same flow rate and therefore able to dissipate heat better to the surroundings.

In the free atmosphere, the flow rates increase because there is more expansion of the “coolant”; the air, whenever it accepts more heat either directly from the sun or by conduction from the ground or the “greenhouse gases”. Greenhouse gases are physically incapable (in our nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere) of producing a “blanket” to keep in the heat. They act more as a coolant enhancer than a blanket.

“Lets refer to Figure 5 in Frank’s post and look at the horizontal green line for experiment 1 representing 264 ppm. If CO2 is responsible for maintaining the temperature why is the same amount of CO2 only able to maintain a temperature that is 4 degree colder as we approach a glacial minimum? And if, as Hansen claims, that CO2 is he main driver, why at the same amount of CO2 is the temperature rising at A and then again falling at B?”

Please read the article again, Jim. Hansen et al. only claim that CO2 is the main driver when averaged over tens to hundreds of millions of years. For the Pleistocene glaciations, they note that CO2 (plus all the other greenhouse gases) have an influence that is actually slightly less than the albedo effect of the changing ice masses. Makes sense. When you melt back ice that covers half of NAm and much of Eurasia, you’re going to lose a lot of reflectivity (i.e., albedo). So, elevated greenhouse gases can accompany lower temperatures if other drivers are in play (e.g., the albedo is high). There are other things going on in the Pleistocene as well like thermohaline current changes.

Once again, paleoclimatologists do not claim that GHGs are the only way to change climate, just that, for the last 50 years, they’re the only climate forcings that happen to be increasing commensurately. You’re not going to argue that global warming is being caused by ice sheet albedo changes are you? If so, you’d have a hard (i.e., impossible) time showing that the oxygen isotope values changed over the past 50 years like they did in the Pleistocene.

So, the subject of this blog entry, because it ONLY looks at CO2/temperature relationships and ignores all others (especially albedo), cannot invalidate GHGs as an important agent of climate change.

Leif: The pressure corrected data from Oulu Neutron Monitor since 1964 shows the cosmic ray count a good deal higher than Thule, and it’s not coming down.
Both Thule and Oulu show a 6 mo. trend that is headed up. The corner does not appear to me to have been turned yet.
Looking at the last 6 mos. of 10.7 flux is not giving me any concrete indications that the neutron counts will drop 6 to 12 months from now, according to the lag you mention.
If there is an impending ramp to SC24 just around the corner, I do not see it based on 10.7 flux or neutron count.
That makes me a skeptical observer who refuses to be taken in by things that disappoint on a regular basis. I freely admit it.

I be one of those simple, common, everyday observers who rushes out with his scopes to check on the latest sunspots (while supplies last). The sunspots I now see are every bit as tough as small galaxies in a 16″ scope.
The scintillation had better be as steady as you’re patience.
Don’t try to impress your neighbors with them, they’ll think you’re nuts.

Joel “Since the radiative forcing due to CO2 levels is known to quite good accuracy”
I have been searching for over 10 years for any scientific proof to support this statement if you have it please post it.

This is something that even skeptics like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer seem to accept.

if you apply this formula to the individual periods over the past 130 years when the temperatures were rising then falling you will find the formula does not even begin to past the simplist validation test.

That makes no sense whatsoever. This formula has nothing to do with temperature. To get from it to temperature change, you would have to know the climate sensitivity (or, more precisely, what is called the transient climate response)…And, you would also have to isolate the temperature changes due to CO2 from those due to other causes.

Robert Bateman says:

Why, certainly. The backing off of solar wind leading to increased cosmic rays which interact in the lower atmosphere in the UV to reflect off incoming sunlight and the 1/3 shrinkage of the upper atmosphere that equates to loss of “R” value.

It is hard to know even where to start with this “hypothesis”! But, I will just point out that I don’t see the mechanism for what would cause this “backing off of solar wind” at the intervals that correspond with the Milankovitch oscillations.

Lance says:

……..The sun maybe? lol!

As I noted, the Milankovitch oscillations barely impact the solar forcing at all. They only influence the distribution of sunlight (which is very important because the resulting growth in ice sheets then does caused albedo changes, but that is already accounted for).

If you mean that the sun somehow changes it intensity, there is no evidence to support such large changes…let alone to explain why such changes would happen with the same sort of period as the Milankovitch oscillations.

nobwainer says:

The 100,000 yr Milankovitch cycle delivers an estimated 25% reduction in TSI at its most elliptical point in the orbit cycle. And I cant help but remind everyone, this is another cycle brought to you by our friendly Jovian planets.

25%, really?!? I don’t suppose you have some sort of reference for that estimate?

“Allegedly, CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, but in Fig.2 we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks. “

The 800 year lag is well know. It’s obvious in the graph. You have to compare slopes of the lines not their heights. The slope at -9 thousand years is upward for temperature and flat for CO2. It’s not until about -5.5 to -5 that CO2 slopes upward. So CO2 lagged temps.

The rest of the upward slope is meaningless for comparison purposes because you can make the blue or red line appear in front or in back merely by increasing or decreasing the scales relative to each other. That changes the height, which, as I said does not show what leads or lags.

Clearly at 0 thousand years the temperatures slope downward. CO2 levels off at that point but does not slope down. Not till ~1000 years later does C02 start dropping. So again temperature is leading the downward trend.

Again at +17.5 thousand years temperatures reverse their slope and CO2 mirrors this around +18.75. Of course by eyeball.

The only point the seems to have synchronized shifts is at 22.
BTW, the degree of slope cannot be used as a base of comparison either because that depends on choice of axis scale.

“The argument is that it slows the curve in the back end. And in every curve drawn in fig 8, the back end curve is in fact slower than the climbing period.”

Absolutely WRONG. The 400,000 ybp line drops significantly faster and farther in temperature, than it rises.

“Notwithstanding, I generally agree with the fact that the Vostok graph is a very weak evidence for AGW. But I also don’t see it as evidence against it.”

That’s because you can’t see the math behind a graph. It’s obvious to the math savvy you need to look at all the peaks and valleys but you only pick one. It’s obvious to the math savvy that leveling off is a delayed trend to sloping downward.

How reliable are the CO2 concentration data in the ice cores. I’ve read that CO2 is more soluble in ice than is O2/N2 (air). Can CO2 migrate out of small air bubbles, under pressure, in the long timescales involved?

ccpo (21:32:18) :
The ignorance of the above statement is astounding. That it comes from a non-climate scientist – as so much anti-AGW “science” does – just reinforces the doubt that sentence alone engenders.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say. To believe climate science can only be done by climate scientists is just plain ignorance beyond belief.

Well first you didn’t answer my question, so I am not expecting much more. But I fail to see your logic or Hansen’s, and it won’t matter how many times anyone reads his policy statements. You both mention albedo effects and the lack of albedo ice causing more warming. So lets now follow this crystal clear logic. At the height of the interglacial (you might look at Fig 5 again) where albedo is lowest and CO2 is highest, so that your proposed main warming drivers are both at their peak, yet still the climate plunges into an ice age.

“2/ On the rising edges, the CO2 edge is about the same steepness as the temperature edge; but on the falling edges, the CO2 fall timing is much slower than the temperature fall timing.”

The steepness is merely because of scaling. You could scale ( and chop) so that the falling edge of the CO2 line was closer in slope to the temperature line. which would make the leading edge of the CO2 much steeper than the leading edge of the temps.

There are a few ways to size the the temperature and CO2 axises of the graph that wouldn’t be completely arbitrary. Two are: 1) Resize so the minimum CO2 concentration aligns with the min temp, and the max with the max. 2) Resize so the the area of deviation from the average temperature on the temp graph matches the area of deviation from the average CO2 concentration on the CO2 graph. It’s clear that Fig. 2 doesn’t use method 1) but it’s close. I’m not sure if it uses method 2. Probably it was done by eye in an attempt at 1).

“Please read the article again, Jim. Hansen et al. only claim that CO2 is the main driver when averaged over tens to hundreds of millions of years.”

Great, then we have nothing to worry about. In fact the opposite is true. Short term during the interglacial the CO2 will have minimal effect but over the very much longer period of the next ice age we will get a moderating effect. Beautiful, bring on the CO2.

It’s easy to tell the global warming folks on this thread. They are the ones who start their post by discrediting somebody else and end by saying the climate is so much more complicated than any scientist could possibly imagine. Except, of course, the all knowing global warming people and the IPCC.

I’ve seen this before with religious zealots. They start by making assumptions for you, and if you protest, you are moved from the “lost and need to be converted” to the “heretic and need to be avoided” class. Facts make very little difference to them, as well.

Here we are sending up all these probes and satellites for Earth and the rest of the planets. Why not use the other planets to help us get a firm grip on the question of solar forcing via complicated mechanisms?
Do we see changes in other planets recently?
I suspect we do. Let’s solve for Earth.

But then, no doubt, this is just “astrological correlation without cause.” All members of the Church of AGW will safely confine their gaze to Gaia.
To deprogram yourself from your condition of stepticism induced by reading the above, visit:

Robert Bateman (07:32:10) :The pressure corrected data from Oulu Neutron Monitor
Different stations show slightly different counts for various reasons [geomagnetic activity dependent cut-off, atmospheric conditions, …]. You have to look at an ensemble of stations and not cherry pick the one that matches your thesis. Moscow has had a good stable counter since 1958. Here is that count: http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-1958-now.png.
But that is not the important point, which is this: all stations show a 15-20% variation [depending a bit on station] decrease from solar minimum to maximum. Some people claim that that makes for a few [one or two] tenths of degrees of warming. The variation at minimum from station to station is at least ten times smaller than that and may [by the same argument] make for, at most, a few [one or two] hundredths of a degree temperature difference. What we need to get away from is the misconception that ‘weaker solar wind’ has had any measurable effect.

idlex (05:06:29) :
First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that:
Quite rightly.
It’s exactly the same as with a horse and carriage. Something startles the horse into moving, and this sets the carriage rolling. But once the carriage has got under way, it thereafter drives the horse forward. When you see a horse and carriage careering down a road, you’re not seeing the horse “pulling” the carriage, but instead the horse desperately fleeing from the speeding carriage at its heels.”

Wow, that is great!!! We can get rid of horses and motors all together then! All we need is someone to give our motorless cars a gentle shove and we’re off!!!
Kinda like the Flintstones. :)

ccpo (21:32:18) :
The ignorance of the above statement is astounding. That it comes from a non-climate scientist – as so much anti-AGW “science” does – just reinforces the doubt that sentence alone engenders.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say. To believe climate science can only be done by climate scientists is just plain ignorance beyond belief.

This is what the philosopher or sociologist of knowledge would call the cult of the expert. Only people with credentials are allowed to discuss the topic, and when the pronouncements of these experts are questioned, the answer is that the questioner does not understand because he or she is not qualified. Thus, what began as science ends as little more than religion in a white lab coat.

One of the remarkable and hopeful things about the internet is the tools is provides for ordinary people participate and insist that so-called experts justify their conclusions in terms that ordinary educated people can understand. If they cannot do that, ordinary people are justified in questioning the legitimacy of the paradigm. It is evident to me that such a process is developing, here and elsewhere. The insular nature of much so-called “climate science” has not escaped public notice, thanks to people like Anthony and the discussants here.

Several years ago, when a major defense contractor left Huntsville Alabama, I was able to purchase their library from a surplus sale. Since this company built rocket engines their library had a lot of theoretical books on radiative transfer theory, especially in the infrared.

In the book “Quantum Theory of Light” by Loudon there are two major and one minor method whereby CO2 absorption bands widen (which if you read the explanation on http://www.realclimate.org) is what is happening.

Both Doppler Broadening and Pressure broadening, the two major means whereby CO2 absorption wavelengths broaden, have a temperature dependent term in the equation. Furthermore, the equation for collision (pressure) broadening, has to be taken with regard to the entire atmosphere, not just CO2 molecules. There is even experimental evidence along with a nice graph that illustrates this relationship.

I simply don’t understand why we don’t just lay this argument out and drive a stake in the vampire of CO2 based global warming for all time. Steve McIntyre talks about an engineering quality exposition on the subject and the theoretical underpinnings for that exposition exists.

“Well first you didn’t answer my question, so I am not expecting much more.”

No need to get snarky. I thought I did answer your question. As I said, yes, there are other climate drivers. Also, yes, there is a few thousand-year window where, after initial deglaciations, temps appear to drop before recovering (e.g., OIS Stage 5b). Who knows, maybe this is a precursor to a younger Dryas event caused by a change in the thermohaline current. Also, both methane concentration drops and albedo rises during this few thousand-year event explaining at least part of it. Why do you insist that the few thousand-year event has to be explained by CO2 only?

But most important, if you look at the entire record (sorry, you’ll have to go back to the Hansen et al. paper), CO2, methane, and albedo explain the temperature exceedingly well except for this event. In fact, it’s really hard to explain the Pleistocene swings without CO2 as an important climate forcing agent.

What are you proposing? That CO2 has no effect on climate and that there’s some mysterious forcing agent causing warming over the past half century that modern instruments can’t detect? Do you really think THAT makes sense, especially given the fact that the entire set of Pleistocene swings can’t be explained without CO2 using the same sensitivity demanded by radiation physics? For that to be true you have to engage in a lot of open field running, tap dancing.

Might be that the Sun uses up fuel faster than convection currents can replace it. If the latter reminds you of CO2 getting into the lower layers of the oceans over time, it should.
Suffice to say it that I agree that there are climate drivers not yet recognized by concensus or even discovered that defy proprietary AGW C02 forced modeling.
The Sun won’t be ordered around by computer models, and it most definately won’t be refueled by anybody. You can’t send up a mechanic for repairs or a Doctor with smelling salts.
Maybe we can talk Oral Roberts into saying a prayer for the Prodigal Sun.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It was just that normally the message appears on screen with the words’Waiting for moderation’ As nothing at all appeared I thought it might have been over your limit or something. You do a great job-thanks for your time.

Frank, thanks for this, another poke at attmepting to understand our climate system.

The utter certainty with which some you post is staggering. To state some of what you do, when we understand so little is simply breathtaking. This is what lays at the heart of my skepticism. I KNOW just how little we understand what is happening, but some of you pronounce in a way that allows no room for questioning. That is what lays at the heart of too many of an AGW proponents position.

I see lots of talk about a trace gas, but in all my oceanography courses and some practical applications, I also know the effect and capacity of our ocean system in it’s impact, locally and globally, has been vastly understated. Paradoxically, I can say this with certainty because WE KNOW so little about that subject as well.

Just a brief thought here, my understanding is that the mainstream pro-AGW view is that heating the atmosphere by 1C will cause somewhere around 2C in feedback heating. (A doubling of CO2 will lead to about a 1C in direct heating and 2C from things like changes in ice albedo, water vapor). It seems to me that the lack of symmetry in the response to heating and cooling is germane here too.

The above changes should happen(if they do happen) much more quickly than changes in the CO2 level, and they should also cause a symmetrical response.

FWIW, what Milankovich says is that the melting of the ice and snow at the North Pole is the critical factor in creating an interglacial, like now. This only happens when the earth is tipped sideways more than ‘usual’ and the North pole is pointed at the sun at closest approach to the sun.

This also means that summers will be warmer in the Southern hemisphere, just not to the extent that the Northern hemisphere warms. This also means that winters will be ‘worse’ (i.e. more of pole in darkness longer) especially at the South pole, so trying to sort out the CO2 processes will be interesting, but they are not causal in creating an ice age, nor in removing one.

I have found that when drawing corelations of any kind, or examining the corelations drawn by others, to first examine the agendas of those drawing the corelations, or, as for instance, in the case of students studying poverty alleviation in MIT’s poverty alleviation labs, to understand the overarching agenda of the institution under which such work is carried out that might lead to creating/focussing on specific corelations and not on others.

examines why “global warming” is actually a necessity, and this might rationally explain the pursuit of eveny plausibly justifying corelations such as this CO2:

begin excerpt:

Applying that prioritizing, or weightage if you will, principle to this topic of “Global Warming”, one observes that the coefficient, or the bit position, or weightage occupied by the planetary level changes in the solar system due to sun’s activity is actually a higher order bit position, than the contribution to the measurements from human activity.

And as is entirely obvious from Mr. Gideon Rachman’s article why this is politically motivated, the reasons become clear why this confusion is deliberately being created. If you accept the Capitalist conspiracy for world government, as I have described it, and if you accept the NSSM-200 agenda for population reduction as I have also described it, tying in the hand of Rockefeller to the UN and their agenda for population reduction (citations for these statements are in my various essays), then you must realize why the ruling elite wants to control ‘life activity’, and carbon-credit is their architecture of control!

It is somewhat akin to acquiring control of a nation’s money supply in the guise of managing the economy better. Few in the public understand why such a control is bad anyway, but those who do try to understand it are thrown layers upon layers of obfuscation. Something similar is happening here. Think of acquiring control of ‘carbon-credits’ almost equivalent to acquiring control of a nation’s money supply! This will control every aspect of sustaining life, just as control of money determines every aspect of sustaining the economy. You name it, between the two of them, it will control it in a world-government. And the first recipient of these controls, the carbon-credit specifically, is the developing world, the Global South, because that is where development must be arrested, and populations thinned out! Just as control of money was first exercised where there was a superfluity of industry and commerce, control of ‘carbon-credit’ is intended to be exercised where there is a superfluity of populations aspiring to grow their nascent economies!

end excerpt

I fear that many well meaning scientists and those with great scientific acumen are getting bogged down by rebutting the global warming mantra without realizing that “it takes a sentence to construct a lie, considerably more space to unravel it”.

Since an infinite numbers of lies are always possible, and more to the point, believable by an indoctrinated public, one can spend one’s lifetime refuting them and still not be done with them. That conveniently neutralizes doing anything useful in disturbing the agenda, when one can hardly see the agenda.

Therefore, it would seem logical, to attack the motivation which seeds the lie, and repeatedly exposing that motivation alongside each lie, which might have a bit more efficacy.

It is interesting to note that the detailed signals we derive from the data show that CO2 lags temperature at all time scales, from the 9 month delay for ~ENSO cycles to the ~600 year delay inferred in the ice core data for much longer cycles.

In my Figure 1 and 2, global dCO2/dt closely coincides with global Lower Tropospheric Temperature LT and Surface Temperature ST. I believe that the temperature and CO2 datasets are collected completely independently, and yet there is this clear correlation.

After publishing this paper, I also demonstrated the same correlation with different datasets – using Mauna Loa CO2 and Hadcrut3 ST going back to 1958. More recently I examined the close correlation of LT measurements taken by satellite and those taken by radiosonde.

Further, there are papers by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) that discussed the delay of CO2 after temperature, although neither appeared to notice the even closer correlation of dCO2/dt with temperature. This correlation is noted in my Figures 3 and 4.

This subject has generated discussion among serious scientists. Almost no one doubts the dCO2/dt versus LT (and ST) correlation. Some go so far as to say that humankind is not even the primary cause of the current increase in atmospheric CO2 – that it is natural. Others rely on a “material balance argument” to refute this claim – I think these would be in the majority. I am officially an agnostic on this question, to date.

The warmist side also has also noted this ~9 month delay, but try to explain it as a “feedback effect” – this argument seems more consistent with AGW religious dogma than with science (“ASSUMING AGW is true, then it MUST be feedback”). :-)

It is interesting to note, however, that the natural seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 ranges up to ~16ppm in the far North, whereas the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is only ~2ppm. This reality tends to weaken the “material balance argument”. This seasonal ‘sawtooth” of CO2 is primarily driven by the Northern Hemisphere landmass, which is much greater in area than that of the Southern Hemisphere. CO2 falls during the NH summer due primarily to land-based photosynthesis, and rises in the late fall, winter and early spring as biomass degrades.

There is also likely to be significant CO2 solution and exsolution from the oceans.

‘So there is Global Warming on at least 4 other bodies in our Solar System that co-insides with the recent warming on Earth. Doesn’t this point strongly towards the Sun or some other Cosmic force as the cause?’

If it ain’t the Sun, it’s sure as heck not manmade on other planets.

And for the the cult of the expert.
I have a different name for this: Minimalism. Your concerns do not justify a response, therefore these present conditions are “normal”, and that’s about as political as it gets.

Leif: I know I am hard on you, and I know you have not predicted a big SC like the rest of the normalizers.
I checked the Moscow Neutron Monitor. I see no sign of the neutron count going down at this point, the same as the other monitors. I chose 6 mos because it was in your graph. Apples to apples, fair is fair.
Are there any other monitors that have generated graphs on the net?
I hope you are right in your upcoming predicted ramp, because if you are not, next winter is going to be something awful. And that is when it really hits the fan for Hansen/Hathaway/IPCC.

Frank, Great work.
I do not read any comments above…… (Avoiding influences)
Time is not thermodynamic variable.
Then the quasi-thermodynamic equilibrium of the atmosphere is delayed (or advanced) in time.

Anthony, being an electrical Engineer I would like to have your comment on how the signals are aligned to determine the time delay. I am sure as you know most good electrical engineers align two signals on an oscilloscope so their peak-to-peak maximums are laying on top of the other signal. Then the time delay, lag or lead is measured. I am puzzled how many of the papers and analysis I have seen do not align the peak-to-peak amplitudes. I would like you to comment if you get a chance on what you think the proper way to align the CO2 and temp data from the Vostok Ice cores?

There has been much discussion about diffusion of gases in ice over time – some say the results are not at all reliable – I would suggest they are directionally correct, but not absolutely correct – probably the peaks have declined – thus modern atmospheric CO2 levels may not be any higher than the historic maxima.

Mr. Lansner, thank you very much for a lucid and informative presentation.
Other than some problems interpreting figure 3, I think I understand your work.

ccpo (21:32:18) :

Taking others work and reinterpreting it no *doing* science.

One assumes that you meant ” …reinterpreting it (is) no(t) “doing” science. …”
If that was your intent, it follows then that one would have to say that the explanation of the photoelectric effect by reinterpreting the data [from earlier researchers] was not doing science?

Actually, much good science ISdone by giving a new and different interpretation to data gathered by others.

A little bit off subject, I was on the Shell Brent Delta in the North Sea when it was towed out from Norway and spent 2 years on it, It was in 460ft of water, a 3 leg concrete fixed platform with a 80ft air gap. Shell Petroleum Co. not known for taking chances, had placed buoys and survey ships on the site for years to collect information on the weather, tide drift etc., the results were incorporated into the platform design.
It was calculated that the 60ft air gap was for the hundred year wave, ( once in one hundred years.) the first winter on site we were shaken by the hundred year wave so many times that it became, a oh, hum, the point being even Shells trillions and experts could not predict the weather

@Mary Hinge (15:24:54) :
Oh Mary :-) I was afraid that I was the only sceptic blogwriter on Watts that would not have you say something bad about me. I would not feel that I had been on Watts without a little dose Mary Hinge! Thanks.

Then this La Nina talk of yours: Hmm as far as I remember, you thought there would be an El Nino in dec 2008? I said La Nina…

To correct your memory…I actually said that the highest probability was for ENSO to stay neutral with a small chance of La Nina and also a very small chance of El Nino.
You were the one that insisted quite forcibly that because of high SOI a La Nina was inevitable.

Your article above is based on the tenous link between sunspot numbers and temperature. Time and time again there has been shown to be no link yet you persist in repeating this nonsense. Also you delight in misquoting (dodgy memory again?). For instance “Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.” becomes only a couple of paragraphs later “This is essential, because, the whole idea of placing CO2 in a central role for driving temperatures was: “We cannot explain the big changes in temperature with anything else than CO2″.
This gives a totally distorted view.
Thankfully we have peer review for real science, as for this…well, as I said before it was a brave attempt.

It’s all about the money and a way of generating an industry. I have been an amateur astronomer for many years and I am always interested in these sort of reports. I have never believed the whole CO2 argument and I based that on data previously accumulated but this new data provides a more consolidated argument against CO2 being a cause of rising temperatures.

“albedo rises during this few thousand-year event explaining at least part of it.”

Your response is an example of the circular reasoning that abounds in Hansen’s paper.

How does the albedo increase? What is the driver of this increase? You throw that out without explanation and then go on “tap dancing.”

When you ask “Do you really think THAT makes sense, especially given the fact that the entire set of Pleistocene swings can’t be explained without CO2 using the same sensitivity demanded by radiation physics?” If you assume a solar constant, if you assume we understand everything and there are no mechanisms yet to be understood in which variation in solar output can be amplified, then you demand CO2 explains the Pleistocene swings.

But again, the ice core records show that the 2 main forcings of CO2 and albedo that you and Hansen hold dear, are in direct opposition to observable drops in temperatures. So it would be then be foolish to assume that there is not another forcing agent. And it is the height of vain conceit to think we already know everything. Almost every month NASA announces a new surprise such as magnetic ropes connecting the sun and earth, unexpected holes in the magnetosphere, they even have unexplained gravitational effects on their satellites.

If the drop in solar activity continues and the temperatures continue to drop as well, more attention will be given the more likely driver of climate.

Because warming by any other forcing can cause increased CO2 it is easy to confuse cause and effect. And is not I that claims CO2 is the dominant driver it is Hansen. I am claiming the evidence shows CO2 can not explain the drop in temperatures and there is nothing that Hansen ever said that explains that. I personally think climate changes is affected by combination of solar, ocean and landscape factors.Perhaps you should ask Hansen the same question you misapplied to me and oddly threw out here? “Why do you insist that the few thousand-year event has to be explained by CO2 only?”

Only I would re-word it to ask you and Hansen “why do you think only 3 decades of recent rising temperatures can be explained by CO2 only.” ONce again you can’t have it both ways, as much as you try.

George E. Smith (11:09:07) : At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

Hmmmm… where’d the ice come from?

—

I think the problem with ice cores is that they are primarily indicators of precipitation with temperature a smaller variant. It’s similar to the problem with using tree ring data: multiple causes.

Bob B (11:54:27) : how the signals are aligned to determine the time delay

Autocorrelation. It’s a statistical method that works much like what you’d do manually using an oscilloscope and is likely more objective when the data do not correlate precisely. The scope method wouldn’t work very well if the separation of the two signals is subject to significant jitter.

Robert Bateman (11:46:10) :I see no sign of the neutron count going down at this point, the same as the other monitors.
That is not the point. The point is that it will not go further up just like it didn’t at any and all of the previous minima. Lomnicky Stit is also good: http://neutronmonitor.ta3.sk/realtime.php3
They only show the last month, so you have to be patient. BTW, on that graph, 100% is the ‘normal’ background value [derived from previous maxima [solar minima].

I hope you are right in your upcoming predicted ramp, because if you are not, next winter is going to be something awful. And that is when it really hits the fan for Hansen/Hathaway/IPCC.
I don’t think there will be a significant up ramp. There will be a gentle climb [with the usual wiggles superposed] to R ~ 75 in several years time [unless Livingston is right].

1) Does the broadening increase the “width” of absorption, i.e. a wider frequency band or does it increase the “height” i.e. does it get “blacker”?
2) What is the approximate effect per degree at ‘normal” temperatures?

Saturation of the IR absorption of CO2.
1) At what percentage CO2 is the atmosphere essentially “black” to IR in the affected wavelengths?
2) How much effect does Doppler broadening have on the saturation of the IR absorption of CO2?

From an earlier life, I am aware of how Doppler broadening can affect the neutron absorption of U238. It’s the major negative temperature feedback in large nuclear power reactors. I just wondered if this was conceptually similar.

foinavon
You Said: “Alternatively, the rise in CO2 can be the primary driver of warming. That has occurred in several (perhaps most or all) of the extinction events in the deep past”
Is it really your position that most or all of the deep past extinction events are a result of CO2 driven global warming? I have not seen that in the literature. Please provide a few links to this assertion and how explain the mechanism on how CO2 warmed the planet enough to kill the dinosaurs after the meteor induced “nuclear” winter.
thanks

There’s pretty good evidence that many of the mass extinctions were associated with tectonic events, the consequences of which were considerably raised global temperatures from greenhouse gas emission (CO2 but also methane) as well as ocean anoxia. The early Jurrasic extinction is associated with very long lived greenhouse gas enduced warming (200,000 years worth); e.g.:

The extinction associated with the Paleo-Eocene-Thermal Maximum (PETM)55 MYA is probably the best characterised example of massive tectonic processes (the opening up of the N. Atlantic as the plates seperated) associated with enhanced atmospheric greenhouse gases CO2 (and/or methane), ocean acidification etc.; e.g.:

The end-Cretaceous extinction (demise of the dinosaurs!) is somewhat contentious. The overall event is associated with greatly raised temperatures from greenhouse gas emssions.. The timing/ultimate causes haven’t been quite sorted I think. A significant part of the warming and extinctions are dated to periods of several 100,000’s years after the Chicxulub (Yucatan peninsula) impact, and are temporally associated with the massive tectonic events that gave rise to the Deccan Traps in now India. There is evidence of an impact (associated with the K/T boundary) that blasted into limestone-rich depositis vapourising the carbonate back into CO and was responsible for much of the raised CO2 and warming; e.g.:

“This finding reinforces previous evidence for major climatic warming after the KTB impact and implies that severe and abrupt global warming during the earliest Paleocene was an important factor in biotic extinction at the KTB.”

.”Faunal and geochemical evidence from the end-Permian, end-Devonian, end-Cretaceous and Triassic/Jurassic transition suggests that the biotic stress was due to a lethal combination of tectonically induced hydrothermal and volcanic processes, leading to eutrophication in the oceans, global warming, sea-level transgression and ocean anoxia”

recent reviews on the subject support massive tectonic events (and associated greenhouse-induced warming, ocean anoxia and other consequences in extinctions:

Lief: I AM observing that Livingston is right. Those spots that do appear these days are the devil to see on projection. If you have good weather where you are in the North Bay, by all means, check it out for yourself next spot.
You are still welcome to come visit this skeptic, and we’ll chase down a spot while supplies last. I am of the mind that in the coming years, we may not have such opportunity.

Robert (22:14:16) :
Sorry to taks so long getting back to you on this, been busy doing other things. For a link to some experimental data which is actually an examination of Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper try Dr. Noor van Andel here. http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?do=show&id=introduction.
Unfortunately I have collected a rather extensive library on this subject over the past 10+ years and I am not the best organizer in the world so it takes a little time.
Dav in actual fact at -60 deg C the water saturation pressure is equal to 34 ppm at +25 deg C it is around 30 000 ppm when compared to 1 atmos. of air. Since water vapour is about 5 times as effective as CO2 when it comes to greenhouse gas effect and the physical mechanism is identical i.e. same laws of physics apply how come we do not see a runaway effect with water and why does the logrithmic law that IPCC says applies to CO2 does not apply to water.
Jon read the paper by Dr. John Nicol it is the best fundamental physics paper there is. You can find it in ICECAP library.
I noticed earlier on someone asked why CO2 did not settle out at the surface because it is heavier, this may have been answered but gasses are not like liquids which will do this, each gas exists as if it were completely on its own that is the law of partial pressures so the distribution of CO2 is completely independant of any other gas which may be around it.

Mary Hinge (12:31:01) :
Your article above is based on the tenous link between sunspot numbers and temperature.

Frank wrote:

But this is the climate debate, so massive rescue missions have been launched to save the CO2-hypothesis. So explanation for the unfortunate CO2 data is as follows:

First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.

Read that again. Frank is stating that orbital changes are used by AGW proponents to reconcile the lag in CO2 concentration. Frank gave no hypothesis explaining what starts temperature increases.
Where did Frank mention sunspots?

Time and time again there has been shown to be no link yet you persist in repeating this nonsense. Also you delight in misquoting (dodgy memory again?). For instance “Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.” becomes only a couple of paragraphs later “This is essential, because, the whole idea of placing CO2 in a central role for driving temperatures was: “We cannot explain the big changes in temperature with anything else than CO2″.
This gives a totally distorted view.

Insert the word ” Antarctic” in front of temperature in the second quote and move on.

Thankfully we have peer review

Unfortunately, experience has convincingly shown me that some of the brightest individuals migrate toward high-paying (relative to government) jobs where peer review isn’t an option. I would hope that you will argue the science here and not semantics, (with people here who know better than I) and not the method of publication. I’m weary of you beating that horse.

“Only I would re-word it to ask you and Hansen “why do you think only 3 decades of recent rising temperatures can be explained by CO2 only.” ONce again you can’t have it both ways, as much as you try.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. I think you’ll agree that attributing causes to the past few decades is much easier than doing so for a few thousand-year interval that occurred at least 100,000 years ago. For example, satellite radiometers and cosmic particle capture experiments demonstrate that TSI and cosmic ray flux show no overall trend over the past few decades, eliminating solar variability and cosmic ray cloud seeding as possible forcings. Atmospheric [CO2] is easily measured through direct air sampling and is attributable to fossil fuel burning through isotope studies. The amount of increase is consistent with observed warming of the troposphere and simultaneous cooling of the stratosphere. Satellite readings also demonstrate a dimming of IR coming from the earth in the expected GHG spectral bands over the past 20-30 years. The excess CO2 put into the atmosphere (as calculated from fossil fuel use) is predicted to be absorbed by the ocean, a prediction consistent with direct measurements of increasing pCO2 and acidity of the oceans. Very little of this direct information is available for the MIS Stage 5d-like events.

What a load of cobblers!
A large rent opens in the Earth’s crust. There are vast amounts of super-heated gases poured into the atmosphere. 10,000s of square miles of ground are volcanically heated 24/7 to way above any solar daytime figure. This will set off a hyper-hurricane that will dominate the Earth’s weather/climate for the time.

With the Earth surrounded by dust and aerosols and more water in the atmosphere than we can guess at, it seems rather unlikely that reabsorbed long infra-red radiation would even be detectable.

Science is going to have lot of trouble removing the fools who are prepared to lie for a grant. It is going to have even more trouble regaining its credibility. Still, every scientist who published or posted to the ‘net in support of the CO2 delusion is on record and their future work can be accorded the respect it deserves.

EM Smith, (and the others who have discussed the role of the biosphere in modulating CO2 levels)

First thanks to everyone for the fascinating discussion and to Frank for his excellent paper, and of course to Anthony for this wonderful site.

When I read people’s arguments about the effect of the biosphere on CO2, they tend to focus mainly on plants, but we animals play a role too.

I like to think of atmospheric CO2 levels as partly the result of a race between the flora and the fauna.

The flora is busily trying to turn all the CO2 in their environment, together with water and various nutrients, into the complex carbohydrates that make up the plant, by using the sun’s energy to do the trick. The fauna are busily trying to turn those carbohydrates, directly or indirectly, into CO2 and energy to go hunting for more carbohydrates.

It’s worth remembering that most fauna are exothermic and even us endotherms require some heat to survive, so at lower temperatures there will be fewer, less active fauna. It is also worth remembering that most of this race takes place at the microscopic level.

Quite how this impacts CO2 levels, I’m not sure but I feel the need to point out that there are two sides to the biospheric effects on CO2.

Dave E. I sincerely hope that no one would shoot someone down for asking an honest question. We may get a little sharp when someone makes nonsensical comments but that is totally different.
The short answer to your question is NO there is no difinitve proof of how much heat is transferred from the surface to the atmosphere individually by convection, conduction, radiation, evaporation and sublimation. Heat is also lost directly to space through the clear sky by the radiation which is not captured by the greenhouse gasses. A very large numer of scientists have been grappling with this question for a long time and everyone must make a lot of assumptions and approximations. For example the cloud cover has varied from 63% to 69% over a period of 15 years.
An honest NASA scientist made the following observation on a NASA web site relating to clouds.
Such variations are referred to as “natural” variability, that is the climate varies naturally for reasons that are not fully understood. The problem for understanding climate changes that might be produced by human activities is that the predicted changes are similar in magnitude to those shown here. The difference between natural and human-induced climate change will only appear clearly in much longer ( >= 50 years) data records.
I fully expect with the change in political hierarchy in the U.S. in 2009 such comments by serious, honest and unbiased scientists will be censored out of NASA and NOAA web sites.
This is only one of the many complexities of the climate system which can not be input accurately into computer models.
The other side of the coin is how much heat is absorbed by the surface, again this calculation relies extensively on averages and assumptions since there are a large number of factors in this equation too.

Frank Lasner: By the way, since your analysis relies strongly on the details of the temperature drop into the glacial periods, you should probably have a look at this paper that argued that there are some artifacts in the deuterium data that need to be considered when making these sorts of details comparisons: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6846/full/412523a0.html

“Just a brief thought here, my understanding is that the mainstream pro-AGW view is that heating the atmosphere by 1C will cause somewhere around 2C in feedback heating. (A doubling of CO2 will lead to about a 1C in direct heating and 2C from things like changes in ice albedo, water vapor) …. ”

Woe, hold on here a moment. I hadn’t thought about it like this before. It just occurred to me that if this were true, would we not see in the graphs above, the rise of CO2 beginning, temperature rising in conjunction, then as CO2 rises more, shouldn’t the temperature begin to rise quicker and quicker? Wouldn’t this show an upward “curve” in the graphs? This is a multiplicative effect and should produce a graph with upward trending “curves” that would correlate to CO2 levels as they rise. Would it not?

I don’t believe I have ever seen a graph of CO2/Temperature correlations (outside of Gore’s Sci-Fi movie) that show this happening, either historically or currently. Does this fact not invalidate the “feedback heating” hypothesis?

… why does the logrithmic law that IPCC says applies to CO2 does not apply to water.

It’s not a law, it’s an approximation! It also breaks down at low concentrations (where the CO2 window isn’t saturated) and at high concentrations (where I guess even the borders have nothing to offer.

The logarithmic relationship is just curve fitting and an approximation so that CO2’s effects can be readily handled by mathematics and casual conversation. I think it’s important to remember its just an approximation, but I fear most people have forgotten that or never learned that.

Water has several wavelengths that are not saturated, and is probably pretty tough to model (especially with varying concentrations and even more so with its penchant to turn into clouds).

You might be interested in this chart which shows the annual change in CO2 (moved back 5 months) versus temperature change back to 1958. (This is based on the same chart Frank posted on icecap and I guess Allan produced above).

I haven’t quite decided if the CO2 growth rate lags temperature by 5 months or whether the chart really shows 7 months. It is the change from 12 months previous (the annual CO2 growth rate) moved back 5 months. I guess it really is 7 months.

But the effect is striking – similar to what you both have posted but with the line chart (using thinnest lines of Excel rather than the usual climate chart which uses big thick lines that hide almost all the variation) it is very clear there is a direct correlation between CO2 growth and temperature.

Advice to everyone – use the thinnest lines you can when you are charting climate data since there is a lot more variation going on in the climate than we normally see in charts and it is hidden when you use the big thick lines that the IPCC and GISS like to use. The same goes for smoothing data or using annual or five-year averages.

Ric, In a previous post I think I mentioned that CO2 becomes saturated at 50 ppm and the same thing happens to water. It was a rhetorical question and I was being sarcastic sorry you missed that.
I have never been able to attach graphs to any blogs it sure would be useful I also notice all the special fonts get wiped out too.

Thanks to TonyB for the Beck datapoints, other data from the usual sources and processed from best available resolution, then decimated. Might be a few latest datapoints missing, with no material effect at that wide timeline.

You sound like you might be a climate scientist, in which case things might be different where you are, but for the rest of science it goes something like this. Formulate your theory in a form that it can in principle be shown to be false. Make predictions that can be compared with observations. Make the observations. If the observations are reliable and disagree with the predictions, the theory is false.

The theory being examined by Frank is: CO2 causes temperatures to increase. There are two obvious predictions. 1. An increase in CO2 comes before an increase in temperature; 2. Higher CO2 levels lead to higher temperatures. Prediction 1 doesn’t agree with the observation that increases in temperature happen before increases in CO2 (the observations seems to be accepted by most climate scientists leading some to revise the theory by including a positive feedback loop involving water vapor). The new (to me) observation by Frank is that you can identify a CO2 level in the early phase of the cycle which is associated with warming (before the peak) but also CO2 levels higher than that which are associated with cooling (after the peak). According to Prediction 2 the temperature should be increasing at the higher CO2 level. Accepting the observation, the theory is shown to be false (and so is the revised theory involving an extra feedback loop).

You comment that other factors are involved. Yes, of course, but the theory that CO2 causes temperatures to increase (which is the basis of policies on carbon taxes) is not correct. The alternate theory that maybe you prefer (that CO2 could have a minor impact on temperatures but it is overwhelmed by other factors) is quite consistent with Frank’s observations (but a poor basis for a carbon tax).

First of all, without extinctions we would not be here. Extinction of species is a common companion of evolution. A fossil record documents some 2 • 10 ^5 such extinctions. Only about 5% of all animal and plant species, ever originated on the Earth, are alive today.

Sloan and Morrill described “persistent discrepancies” between climate model results and interpretations from proxy data in the Eocene.

‘Essential for development and testing of new models of Pangean climate requires proxy data with appropriate spatial and temporal scales. Sloan and Morrill (1998) pointed out the continuing discrepancy between global climate models (with higher pCO2) and geological and paleontological climate proxy data from times of “extreme climate”, such as the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. They show that orbital forcing of climate can play a critical role in continental climate with extreme values of orbital parameters reducing the interior annual temperature range by 75%, resulting in cooler summers and warmer winters. As shown by Sloan and Morrill (1998), these orbital variations must be taken into account in comparing paleoclimate models to climate proxy records. While the latter comparison requires the specification of one orbital state, the geological proxies span many orbital cycles as well as the full range of orbital forcing. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to expect model-proxy comparisons to be valid only over intervals of time representing one orbital state or minimally the climate proxies should be drawn from homologous portions of several cycles (e.g., times of high insolation). Hence, paleoclimate proxy data from the geological record must be placed in a temporal framework appropriate for Milankovitch-scale modeling. While much remains to be done with outcrops, the workshop panels concluded that very long sections, such as those available through coring provided the best means of obtaining the needed high-resolution data for the next generation of models and model-data comparisons.”

Anthony,
Re: Broken Links?
The links to the complete pages of the posts about Hansen’s former
supervisor, and Mr.Theon’s debunking of the statistcs don’t work.
I get an error:404 page cannot be found message, regardless of where
on site I try to link to them. Interestingly, all the other pages will open
up. Being of suspicious mind, one wonders if you have picked up a
hacker, who is blocking those links, as they are dynamite to the AGW
crew.

The 100,000 yr Milankovitch cycle delivers an estimated 25% reduction in TSI at its most elliptical point in the orbit cycle. And I cant help but remind everyone, this is another cycle brought to you by our friendly Jovian planets.

25%, really?!? I don’t suppose you have some sort of reference for that estimate?

Estimates vary, but a simple look up on Wiki would give you:

Currently the difference between closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and furthest distance (aphelion) is only 3.4% (5.1 million km). This difference is equivalent to about a 6.8% change in incoming solar radiation. Perihelion presently occurs around January 3, while aphelion is around July 4. When the orbit is at its most elliptical, the amount of solar radiation at perihelion is about 23% greater than at aphelion. This difference is roughly 4 times the value of the eccentricity.

Bill Illis,
The chart you presented is very persuasive. I remember when Paul first showed the WFT website, he also presented a similar graph (without the offset) that clearly showed the CO2 rise preceeding the temperature increase. At the time Paul cautioned against making too much of it, however CO2 rise now seems to be a robust indicator of future temperature rise, on the shoprter and longer time scales.
Thanks for the presentation and the advice… thin lines….
Mike Bryant

Rob,
“Atmospheric [CO2] is easily measured through direct air sampling and is attributable to fossil fuel burning through isotope studies.”
Try reading the paper by Tom Quirk “ Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide” The isotopic balance in the atmosphere is far more complex and there are many more variables than your simplistic conclusion. First consider that 94% of all anthropogenic CO2 is released into the northern hemisphere. Next the CO2 is not well mixed as the IPCC state. From the nuclear tests in the 60’s the mixing north to south is very slow, like several years ( another rhetorical question) so why is the average northern hemisphere CO2 not higher than the south?
“satellite radiometers and cosmic particle capture experiments demonstrate that TSI and cosmic ray flux show no overall trend over the past few decades, eliminating solar variability and cosmic ray cloud seeding as possible forcings.”
Where on earth do you get this nonsense from, the variations are extremely well documented and are quite significant, I am not long on posting web sites but try this one. http://www.spaceweather.com/ It has lots of good links.
Acidity of the oceans,what a red herring, the CO2 is rapidly converted into carbonates and sinks to the bottom there are many papers on this subject.
As a final shot try doing a mass balance calculation on the IPCC carbon cycle on page 515 of the 4th AR, pure unadulterated drivel. I made up a simple excel program and used their numbers where possible, the results at balance are quite suprising.
One more “The amount of increase is consistent with observed warming of the troposphere and simultaneous cooling of the stratosphere.” Have you even read the IPCC 4th AR and their predictions then compared them to the UAH and RSS data over the last 30 years. Their computer predictions are so far wrong it is beyond belief that they call themselves scientists and they are still trying to reinvent the wheel to wriggle out of their total embarrasment.

Jim Steele (13:53:07) :I am curious what you would predict for the sun cycle 25?
We cannot predict two cycles ahead because the amount of magnetic flux that ends up in the polar cap depends on a random process. However, one can make a statistical guess [cycle 25 will be low], just as one can make a statistical guess that the sum of two dice thrown at random would be 7+/-1 and be right almost half the time.

Rob (15:15:09) :
Now we’re getting somewhere. I think you’ll agree that attributing causes to the past few decades is much easier

You are grasping at straws, Rob. You aren’t getting anywhere. The heat stored in the oceans, the vertical and horizontal mixings are not modeled well at all. There is more heat in the upper few meters of ocean than in the total atmosphere. When and where that heat is released is totally unpredictable. No one can predict that. Increasees in solar activity may have created heat stored in the oceans that still has yet to be released. The PDO was only recently recognized by fish biologist. Predicting ENSO is still guess work.

Maybe you want tell us all that you were able to predict that with the rising CO2 that predicted the global cooling trend for the past 10 years?

Yes, I believe it does. Also the fact that the earth has been much hotter in the past without bursting into flames. Also what Frank has shown here, that cooling happens at the higher CO2 after the temperature peak.

“Maybe you want tell us all that you were able to predict that with the rising CO2 that predicted the global cooling trend for the past 10 years?”

The averaged global temperature of the past 10 years was almost 0.2 degrees C higher than that of the previous 10 years. Do you actually think that the next 10 years will be cooler?

davidc (17:26:16) :

“You sound like you might be a climate scientist, in which case things might be different where you are, but for the rest of science it goes something like this.”

I’m not really a climate scientist. I do dabble in paleoclimate research and am jealous of the quality of data accessible to those studying the past 50 years. Thanks for the lesson on the scientific method, by the way. However, keep in mind Albert Einstein’s words

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

when attributing too much importance to a nonpeer-reviewed study that proposes CO2 is the only climate driver explaining isolated events that happened hundreds of thousands of years during a time period with MUCH different boundary conditions than today and, furthermore are recorded indirectly in the geologic record.

In which peer-reviewed journal does this appear? Ditto for all your other references to TSI variations, ocean acidity, and Excel recalculations of IPCC mass balances. Finally, educate me. Show me exactly how wrong the AR4 IPCC predictions are w.r.t. satellite temp estimates. Make sure now that you use the same reference baseline period for the satellite data and predictions!

Rob: I agree with you to the extent that CO2 is increasing, the increase is anthropogenic, and that isotope studies seem to support this (as does the basic mechanics of the carbon cycle).

However, at his point I must depart company. CO2 does not correlate well with temperature increase from the post WWII era. I agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has a warming effect. But I think the degree of the effect is so small (and also ‘way into diminishing returns) that it is utterly swamped by other factors (such as six cycles flipping from cold to warm phase between 1976 and 2001) and barely shows up even as an underlying signal.

From that point, with “all the faucets running hot” we have had very flat temperatures. Then, starting in 2007, the PDO went cold and the temperatures have cooled. That is not only a good correlation, but it is a second-order correlation, and that is very strong evidence (CO2/temp. rise is at best only of the first order).

And even said small underlying signal may be due or mostly due to a steady (c. 1°F) three-century long recovery from the low point of the LIA to the current Optimum. AGW supporters loudly pooh-pooh this premise, but not for any convincing reason I have ever read.

Fair enough. But, as they say, the proof will be in the pudding. If globally averaged temp keeps increasing and >0.1 degree C every decade for the next few decades (I should last that long, anyway), then it will be hard to pin it on a natural recovery from the LIA. Myself, I’ll bet on the Physics over the “natural trends”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere
2. “The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 kyr BP (Before Present). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied by volume between 180 – 210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 ppm during warmer interglacials…
… On longer timescales, various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 myr BP of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 myr BP of over 6,000 ppm.”

Questions and meanderings:

A. According to para.1 above:

During Ice ages, does almost all plant life die out as a result of some combination of lower temperatures and CO2 levels that fell below 200ppm (para. 2 above)? If not, why not?

Does this (possible) loss of plant life have anything to do with rebounding of atmospheric CO2 levels as the world exits the Ice Age (in combination with other factors such as ocean exsolution)? could this contribute to the observed asymmetry?

When all life on Earth comes to an end, will it be because CO2 permanently falls below 200ppm as it is permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks, hydrocarbons, coals, etc.?

Since life on Earth is likely to end due to a lack of CO2, should we be paying energy companies to burn fossil fuels to increase atmospheric CO2, instead of fining them due to the false belief that they cause global warming?

Could T.S. Eliot have been thinking about CO2 starvation when he wrote:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Leif Svalgaard (18:04:31) said We cannot predict two cycles ahead because the amount of magnetic flux that ends up in the polar cap depends on a random process.

Thanks Leif. Your choice of words “the amount of magnetic flux” puzzles me though. My apologies if I am misinterpreting but it almost sounds as if you conceptualize “static or solid chunks of magnetic flux” that move around. Am I intrepreting you correctly?

I always think of flux as a field that is a product of electric currents and wonder what you are inferring?

“Show me exactly how wrong the AR4 IPCC predictions are w.r.t. satellite temp estimates. Make sure now that you use the same reference baseline period for the satellite data and predictions!”

I’ll do that one better. Lucia shows ALL the temp series falsify the IPPC projections up to the present moment. But I’d caution you against poo-pooing her work, or claiming it isn’t ‘peer-reviewed’, because when she emails Hansen with a question, he responds immediately.

Jim Steele (21:18:41) :you conceptualize “static or solid chunks of magnetic flux” that move around. Am I intrepreting you correctly?
In a sense, yes. See below.

I always think of flux as a field that is a product of electric currents and wonder what you are inferring?
In physics there is a sort of ‘confusion’ between H and B, the magnetic field and the magnetic induction. Most physicists now consider B to be the more fundamental quantity and ‘magnetic field’ is often used for B rather than for H. Electrical engineers refer to B as magnetic flux density. [you could say the whole thing is in flux :-) ]. Anyway, here is my take on it [matches most solar physicist’s]: a solar magnetograph looks at a small piece of the Sun’s surface and we measure the ‘number of field lines’ through that surface [along the line of sight], this we call the ‘flux’ [measured in Maxwells or Webers]. If we divide by the area of that piece, we get the ‘flux density’ B. Because the solar photosphere is a conductor [conductivity like that of sea water] and [more importantly] because the scale [length] of magnetic structures is so huge, the field is ‘frozen into’ the plasma [the MHD approximation] and moves with it. So, move the plasma around and you move the magnetic flux with it. Technical papers on these matters are often inconsistent in terminology, but the reader usually figures out from the context what is meant.

Wow, that is great!!! We can get rid of horses and motors all together then! All we need is someone to give our motorless cars a gentle shove and we’re off!!!
Kinda like the Flintstones. :) – Mike Bryant

Not “kinda like the Flintstones”, but exactly like the Flintstones. You must have noticed that when Barney Rubble climbed into his car, there were never any horses pulling it. I noticed.

It would all make perfect sense if everything was always rolling downhill. In “DownhillWorld”” there’s no need to provide power to make anythng work. DownhillWorld is just like everybody else’s world, except it’s tipped over at 20 – 30 degrees to the horizontal, in all directions. In DownhillWorld, the real danger is of everything that happens becoming an avalanche, so that if you, say, drop something on the floor, it’ll hit something else and start it moving, and the next thing you know your kitchen table and chairs will be tumbling downhill along with your neighbour’s cat, and dog, and house, and half the neighbourhood as well.

Jim Hansen, I suspect, inhabits a DownhillWorld in which everything is near its ‘tipping point’, in which everything is on the edge of falling over, and beyond which there is an inevitable ‘runaway’ avalanche. It’s a world in which all the crockery on the dinner table is slowly sliding towards the edge, and you need a rail to stop them falling (like they have on ships).

And, in a great many ways, the real world really is a DownhillWorld. There are avalanches. There is a chemical activation energy. The explosion of a nuclear bomb does entail a chain reaction which is a sort of avalanche. But the real world is also one in which these avalanches come to a stop. Somehow or other, when thousands of tons of rocks have cascaded downhill, they come to a halt. And when I light a cigarette, the whole world doesn’t catch fire. And when they set off the nuclear bomb, the whole world did not explode. Why was that?

Sandy wrote:“Science is going to have lot of trouble removing the fools who are prepared to lie for a grant. It is going to have even more trouble regaining its credibility. Still, every scientist who published or posted to the ‘net in support of the CO2 delusion is on record and their future work can be accorded the respect it deserves.”

I suggest that a “Hall of Shame” website be set up where the statements can be cataloged, and that it be well-publicized now. This will concentrate the minds of the go-along/get-along trend followers in science–they’ll know there will be accountability down the road.

As for the panjandrums (officials) in scientific organizations like the NAS who have endorsed AGW as settled and thereby marginalized a contrarian position as unworthy of consideration, they should be dismissed from their posts, once AGW is falsified by events, probably within a couple of years. The republic has no need of such personnel.

Rob. When are you AGW fanatics going to stop hiding behind the “peer review” smoke screen, do you not have a brain that can think for itself or are you just mindless sheep. I posted that the excel program was my own because I believe in doing my own research. Frankly I trust nothing until I have validated it using my own methods and I try to get fundamental data which has not been customized by people like Mann and Hansen. Then I draw my conclusions.
Try doing your own evaluations from first principals if you have the education and intelligence to do so. I am not going to waste my time in lengthy peer review references, read the material and decide for yourself if it is valid or not, if not tell me where the author erred. The TSI is published daily by NASA of course it is not peer reviewed it is just basic data which is what you should be looking at not someone else’s opinion if you want to know the truth look at the basic data not “peer reviewed” opinions. The IPCC boast a long list of “peer reviewers” the only trouble is if you read the articles by these “Peer reviewers” you will find many like Dr. Vincent Grey, just as example, disagreed with the IPCC but their edits and comments backed up with “peer reviewed” papers were thrown in the garbage because they were not politically acceptable. So much for your “peer review “ process it is a total sham and is censored at the political whim of the journal to which it was submitted. Thus we can create the illusion of “consensus”. You obviously have not read the IPCC4th AR and seen the predictions they made then compare them with the actual data from climate4you or woodfortrees web sites there are many ocean acidity “peer reviewed” papers but if you are too lazy to find them why should I bother.

Allan. An interesting post and it reiterates many points I have been trying to make. One of the responses I had was that grasses do not suffer from the low CO2 as much as other plants I still have to check this out, there is a wealth of research material on the effect of enhanced CO2 on plant life I do not think there is so much on depleted CO2 but I intend to follow it up.
I must disagree with you on the significance of leaf stomata, earlier I posted a reference to a paper on this subject, the correlation between CO2 and leaf stomata from 1950 to 2000 was studied and the proxy is found to be very robust. Unlike the ice core samples which are 1000 year averages in a single sample the leaf stomata are very date specific the biggest problem is dating the sample by carbon dating when dealing with very old fossils. The paper I referenced addressed the time period from 6800 BP to 8000 BP so the carbon dating was quite accurate since the half life of 14C is 5730 years.
I have already addressed one of your questions which is the ice core samples are proven to be 30 to 50% low so the CO2 never got that low thus no die off of vegetation and animal starvation which is supported by fossil remains. I think it is established that the CO2 came from the oceans as they warmed up.
Yes if we had 1000 ppm CO2 we would be living in a much better world. But the Milakovich cycles will take care things and humanity will freeze in another 10 000 years but that really will not bother us will it.

Idlex,
The downhill world is alive and well within the GCMs… Fortunately, wind, solar and geothermal work splendidly in our downhill world! Just a gentle nudge, a push, a shove and the wheels of commerce and manufacture will spin wildly making our downhill dreams come true! Yes Mr. Idlex, the world is heading downhill. The downhill students of the recent downhill past will be employed by the downhill energy experts who have been pushing the downhill windmills and the downhill solar farms. We will all thrive on the downhill money and the downhill energy which will power our downhill lifestyle into the beautiful downhill future. Yup, we’re heading downhill to hell in a handbasket with downhill wheels
Ain’t it great?!?
Mike Bryant

First of all: When a few decades of low sunspot number is accompanied by Dalton minimum and 50 years of missing sunspots is accompanied by the Maunder minimum, what can for example thousands of years of missing sunspots accomplish? We don’t know.
What we saw in the Maunder minimum is NOT all that missing solar activity can achieve, even though some might think so. In a few decades of solar cooling, only the upper layers of the oceans will be affected. But if the cooling goes on for thousands of years, then the whole oceans will become colder and colder. It takes around 1000-1500 years to “mix” and cool the oceans. So for each 1000-1500 years the cooling will take place from a generally colder ocean. Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.

Allan. An interesting post and it reiterates many points I have been trying to make. One of the responses I had was that grasses do not suffer from the low CO2 as much as other plants I still have to check this out, there is a wealth of research material on the effect of enhanced CO2 on plant life I do not think there is so much on depleted CO2 but I intend to follow it up.

I must disagree with you on the significance of leaf stomata, earlier I posted a reference to a paper on this subject, the correlation between CO2 and leaf stomata from 1950 to 2000 was studied and the proxy is found to be very robust. Unlike the ice core samples which are 1000 year averages in a single sample the leaf stomata are very date specific the biggest problem is dating the sample by carbon dating when dealing with very old fossils. The paper I referenced addressed the time period from 6800 BP to 8000 BP so the carbon dating was quite accurate since the half life of 14C is 5730 years.
STOMATA COMMENTS ARE FROM WIKI (NOT THE BEST SOURCE FOR AGW INFO)

I have already addressed one of your questions which is the ice core samples are proven to be 30 to 50% low so the CO2 never got that low thus no die off of vegetation and animal starvation which is supported by fossil remains.
CAN YOU PLEASE PROVIDE A REFERENCE OR TWO?
I HYPOTHESIZED SIMILAR IN A POST HERE RECENTLY – I QUESTIONED WHETHER CURRENT CO2 LEVELS ARE TRULY HISTORIC HIGHS – MORE LIKELY ANOTHER RESULT OF GRAFTING TOGETHER DISSIMILAR DATASETS (SEE MANN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING).

I think it is established that the CO2 came from the oceans as they warmed up. YES, TEMPERATURE LEADS CO2, EXSOLUTION AND ALL THAT… …BUT NOT ALL CO2 CAME FROM OCEANS, ESPECIALLY IF PLANT LIFE ON EARTH WAS COMPROMISED. SINGLE SEASONAL CO2 VARIATION IS ~20 PPM/YEAR IN THE FAR NORTH, VERSUS ~140 PPM AMPLITUDE FOR AN ENTIRE ICE AGE.

Yes if we had 1000 ppm CO2 we would be living in a much better world. But the Milankovitch cycles will take care things and humanity will freeze in another 10 000 years but that really will not bother us will it. NOTWITHSTANDING OUR FAILURES AS A SPECIES, I SUGGEST THAT THIS WOULD BE AN UNFORTUNATE END TO THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT.
WE MAY HAVE SOME TIME LEFT TO CONSIDER HOW TO COUNTERACT THESE DOMINANT FORCES OF NATURE, ONCE WE GET OVER THIS OBSESSION WITH AGW… :-)

Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: “First, remember what sunspots are–tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun’s inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a ‘corpse’ of weak magnetic fields.”

Gulp! That means that today’s sunspots (while supplies last) are almost stillborn.
So when exactly did we see the last typical sunspot, or as they say on ABC’s Lost, “Where are we?” ???

OT but amazing:
Two billion years ago parts of an African uranium deposit spontaneously underwent nuclear fission. The details of this remarkable phenomenon are just now becoming clear.

That line was immediately followed by “Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Scientific American.” The natural reactor was found in 1972, my father like to point out that the reaction products pretty much stayed in place, they didn’t leach out into surrounding areas. That 2005 article is quite good and worth reading.

I see that page has a link to Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste. He worked in the control system field producing equipment used in both coal and nuclear plants and was a fan of atomic power. At the time I was in Pittsburgh at CMU where I picked up a strong dislike of coal, coal ash, SO2, NOx, etc.

BTW, the headline on that story is completely bogus and wouldn’t have been used back when Scientific American was a respected magazine. A more accurate statements is at the end, “In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant – a by-product from burning coal for electricity – carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.” The referenced ORNL report, CoalCombustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger? shows that fissionable isotopes in fly ash can release more energy than burning the coal released. (Breeder reactors required for most of that.)

Again, Dad liked that report – if nuclear plants started releasing 100X as much radioactive material as they do now, putting them on par with coal plants, there’d be a huge response aimed at shutting them down.

TonyB,
I have had some questions arising from your graphs but didn’t get a chance to post a comment yesterday. Your follow up post @(06:26:32) with Beck’s comments has more than satisfied my thirst for better understanding of the data.

It is very easy for all of us to query and criticise dry scientific papers; they often have a very narrow context and the scientists themselves are aware of the data strength or limitations. The pressure to publish, and what you can publish are two further considerations. Published data is the tip of the iceberg of knowledge.

Note that while 160 +/- 14 is almost laughable in our current understanding, the understanding of the day made that estimate quite reasonable. As was (and still is) Leif’s prediction. No rancor, no criticism of other predictions or techniques, simply science the way it is supposed to work.

Mary Hinge (02:49:04) :Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.
Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.

The downhill world is alive and well within the GCMs… Yup, we’re heading downhill to hell in a handbasket with downhill wheels – Mike Bryant

Pursuing the idea of a DownhillWorld, where everything threatens to go tumbling downhill in avalanches, I suddenly realised why global warming alarmists call the sceptics “Flat-Earthers”. I used to think that it was because the alarmists had an advanced ‘Copernican’ understanding of the universe, while sceptics still clung to a ‘Ptolemaic’ conception of it, complete with epicycles. But now it seems quite clear to me that sceptics live, quite literally, on a flat earth. An earth on which if a tennis ball is dropped onto the ‘flat’ ground, it will bounce a bit, and then come to a stop. But the alarmists live in a world where, if you drop a tennis ball onto the ground, it’ll bounce away, gathering speed and momentum in the process, with possibly fatal consequences for someone in a neighbouring country.

You’ve taken the notion of a DownhillWorld and universalized it to encompass a whole mentality shared by almost an entire generation. And most likely that’s right It’s one in which what seem little problems to flat-earthers (CO2 in the atmosphere) become big problems, and what seems like big problems (providing the energy to power industry, and to warm homes) become little problems. In DownhillWorld, everyone worries about one sort of imminent runaway catastrophe or other – global warming, epidemics, forest fires -, and they’re not too bothered about energy supplies. That can be done with a few windmills and solar panels. And that’s because in DownhillWorld, there’s a superabundance of energy. There’s far too much of the darn stuff. It’s the poor, toiling flat-earthers, who use up precious (hard to come by) energy plodding around on a flat earth, and who worry about where to get fuel to power their cars and food to fill their stomachs.

Alarmists and sceptics inhabit quite different conceptual worlds, and have different priorities as a consequence. This extends far beyond the localised matter of global warming. It touches upon more or less everything – economics, ethics, and so on. It’s becoming a matter of urgency to show which conceptual scheme is the more realistic, the more in accordance with facts.

There’s nothing new about this. Human history is always like this, with one grand conceptual scheme of things competing with another. And we always seem to be going downhill to hell in a handcart.

Well, I had troubles with my Internet link, couldn’t come in yesterday, but 305 responses in just two days must be a record!

To begin with: Frank made a very clear representation of the ice core – CO2 response. I only can ad two relevant graphics to that.

First about the lag and response of CO2: In theory, it is possible that CO2 has an effect on temperature, as in most cases there is a huge overlap between temperature increase/decrease and CO2 increase/decrease. But there is one exception: the end of the Eemian (the last warm(er) period before the current one). The temperature decreased slowly, while CO2 levels remained high for the full period. At the moment that temperatures were at minimum (and ice sheets at maximum), CO2 levels started to drop with about 40 ppmv. This drop should cause a drop of about 0.4°C (if we take into account the GCM feedbacks, causing 3°C/2xCO2), but not seen at all in the ice core.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
Thus anyway, the influence of CO2 is (much) smaller than what the models predict.

Contrary to what Alan MacRae believes, it is perfectly possible that two variables show a positive feedback on each other, despite a lag of one of them. There shouldn’t be a runaway effect, as long as the combined fortifying effect is smaller than 1. In the case of temperature and CO2, if CO2 has a strong feedback effect, that should be noticed in the detailed Epica Dome C ice core record, but again it is not visible:

With thanks to André van den Berg, who made the graph.
Again, we see a clear (lagged) response of CO2 after temperature, and no response at all from temperature on CO2, while that should be visible, if CO2 is responsible for 40% of the increase in temperature as Hansen says.

Hansen bases his CO2 influence estimate on the glacial – interglacial transitions, as that CO2 is “needed” to reinforce the initial warming, but a different estimate of e.g. ice/vegetation albedo changes and/or cloud cover (nobody knows anything about that from ancient times) will do the job as effectively…

Further there is a remarkaby linear correlation between CO2 and temperature over the full 420,000 years:

This in fact refutes that there is migration of CO2 in the (deepest) ice cores. If that happened, the ratio between CO2 and temperature (about 8 ppmv/°C) wouldn’t be constant over the 4 cycles, but decreasing in time.
Most of the objections made by Jaworowski and others against the low CO2 levels in ice cores were refuted already over 10 years ago by Etheridge. More comment here:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html

Last but not least, the Vostok (and all other) ice core(s) are in contradiction with Frank’s take on the current influence of temperature on CO2 levels in the other thread: his formula says that the increase of CO2 per year is about 3.5 times the temperature difference against a base line. For ice age – interglacial transitions that is only 0.0016 times the temperature difference. In my opinion, temperature has a fast reponse from CO2 on short term (3 ppmv/°C, NOT per year!), from vegetation and ocean surface, while the long-term response (of 8 ppmv/°C) includes deep ocean exchanges and changes in land/ice area…

The problem is that because Frank bases his formula on a high short-term correlation between temperature and CO2 increase (which is right), but uses that including a less good (and spurious) correlation between CO2 increase over the past 50 years and temperature… More on that at the other thread…

There is NOTHING at all global about these Vostok Ice Cores. The entombed temperature record is a record of temperatures at the coldest known place on earth, which can get doen to -90 C, and where temperature excursions of tens of degrees C are common.

At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

Well CO2 is not a problem at the south pole, they measure CO2 in air at some lower level (-4 ppmv), compared to MLO, but that is mainly due to the slow exchange between the NH and SH.

Further, the Vostok ice “temperature” has nothing to do with the local temperature: ice is formed from snow that is formed from water vapor that was evaporated far away. For Vostok, that is supposed to be from a large area of the SH oceans. Colder oceans evaporate less 18Owater and less D2O (deuterium oxide or “heavy water”), relative to “normal” water. Both ratio’s are used to estimate the SH temperatures at the time of ice deposit…

Ferdinand
“Most of the objections made by Jaworowski and others against the low CO2 levels in ice cores were refuted already over 10 years ago by Etheridge. More comment here:”
So who has refuted the stomata data which agrees with Jaworowski. Where are your “testable results” as Einstein would say to back up the critique. The ice core data appears to stand in splendid isolation with no backing from any other methodology.

Idlex,
I think you have the outline for a book there. I’m not sure what type of book it might be though. Would it be fiction or non-fiction? Would it be a book on psychology? Perhaps it could be a children’s book complete with colorful pictures of DownhillWorld, or maybe a thought provoking short story. Could a youtube video be produced which might flesh out the concept even further, or has it already found it’s proper place here as only a few off topic comments in a popular blog?
I hope not…
Mike Bryant

PS Maybe a whimsical essay that Anthony could post under the “fun” category…

Lief
“Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.”
I hate to burst your little fantasy bubble but the only instrumental record we have from that period comes from central England and is the oldest thermometer data on record it shows a drop of approximately 1.5 deg C in annual average temperature over that period of time.

I have already addressed one of your questions which is the ice core samples are proven to be 30 to 50% low so the CO2 never got that low thus no die off of vegetation and animal starvation which is supported by fossil remains.

If you mean by “proven” the work of Jaworowski, better think twice. Jaworowski has a lot of objections which give “possible” problems, but most of them the opposite of what he says (cracks and clathrates in the ice lead to too high levels of CO2, not too low) and most of what he says is refuted by the work of Etheridge (three ice cores, different drilling methods, firn and ice core measurements,…).

Further, even if the “global” CO2 was (too) low in the ice core to sustain vegetation, vegetation itself produces local CO2, which increases average CO2 levels in the lower atmosphere over land with many tens of ppmv’s. Reason why many of the historical CO2 measurements series from Beck are positively biased and show huge variability and stomata data suffer of the same problems.

Lief
“Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.”
I hate to burst your little fantasy bubble but the only instrumental record we have from that period comes from central England and is the oldest thermometer data on record it shows a drop of approximately 1.5 deg C in annual average temperature over that period of time.

Your claim in no way contradicts Leif’s point (and I should get points for correctly spelling Leif’s name!).

His point is that the reduction in TSI is so small that it could only account for 0.05 degrees of the drop in average temperature and that there must be some other mechanism operating, something to do with the storage and transfer of energy in the hydrosphere and atmosphere, perhaps.

Currently the difference between closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and furthest distance (aphelion) is only 3.4% (5.1 million km). This difference is equivalent to about a 6.8% change in incoming solar radiation. Perihelion presently occurs around January 3, while aphelion is around July 4. When the orbit is at its most elliptical, the amount of solar radiation at perihelion is about 23% greater than at aphelion. This difference is roughly 4 times the value of the eccentricity.

We’re talking past each other. What you are talking about is the difference in incoming solar radiation between one part of the year and another. This is indeed important in causing the ice sheets to grow or shrink. However, integrated over the yearly cycle, the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth is very nearly unchanged as the eccentricity of the orbit changes (or, for that matter, the tilt of the axis changes in magnitude or precesses)…Hence, there is very little radiative forcing due directly to this change.

But there is one exception: the end of the Eemian (the last warm(er) period before the current one). The temperature decreased slowly, while CO2 levels remained high for the full period. At the moment that temperatures were at minimum (and ice sheets at maximum), CO2 levels started to drop with about 40 ppmv. This drop should cause a drop of about 0.4°C (if we take into account the GCM feedbacks, causing 3°C/2xCO2), but not seen at all in the ice core.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
Thus anyway, the influence of CO2 is (much) smaller than what the models predict.

Ric:
“The use of geomagnetic activity as a predictor for future solar activity seems counter-intuitive. The Sun is the source of the solar wind disturbances that drive geomag-netic activity and thus it would seem that solar activity should predict geomagnetic activ-ity, not the other way around.- Hathaway”

Then why do it? Why if you know that the Solar Wind distrubances drive your indicator would you want to stick the cart out in front of the horse?
And all this CO2 forcing of climate is sticking the cart out in front of the team, likewise.
We are probably going to end up with a roundabout scheme of the Sun vs the Galaxy in determining Space Weather that in turn drives our Climate on Earth.
If anything, 400 yrs of astronomical discovery had repeatedly drove home the point of just how insignificant man standing on an overshadowed planet is.
Astronomical observations & measuring show 3 planets and a moon undergoing global warming, and it cannot be CO2 forcing due to burning fossil fuels by man.
Now, we got this dark ages mindset trying to bury the observations that keep the fear yoke off of our necks.
That is why I posted Hathaway’s press release, because the man should have bowed out when he knew he was wrong.
Nature hath a way, but it’s not Hathaways thinking.

barry moore (09:33:48) :“Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.”
I hate to burst your little fantasy bubble but the only instrumental record we have from that period comes from central England and is the oldest thermometer data on record it shows a drop of approximately 1.5 deg C in annual average temperature over that period of time.
And what has that to do with the Sun?
Over such long intervals of time, the Total Solar Irradiance is the determining factor [we do not take orbital changes into account for this] [if you disagree, show which other factor is ‘it’ and how much temperature difference that makes]. During the Maunder Minimum TSI was 0.5 W/m2 smaller than today [averaged over a solar cycle] [if you disagree, show how much smaller it was]. 0.5 W/m2 is 0.037% of the average TSI of 1361, so the temperature difference is 1/4 of that [Stefan-Boltzmann’s law: S = aT^4], i.e. 0.009% of 300K or 0.03 degrees, which I conservatively rounded up to 0.05 degrees.

… as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”

MattN (13:43:25) (responding to Eric):

“Except that is not true. A 300 lb/in spring requires 300 lbs to compress 1 inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, and so on until it is completely compressed.”

Mike McMillan (16:06:06) (responding to Matt):

“Except that it is true.
300 lbs for the first inch, 600 lbs for the second, 900 lbs for the third inch.”

Sean Houlihane (05:02:43) (responding to Mike):

“Thanks for confirming your level of understanding of basic physics. If you are going to claim someone is wrong, you should try and provide supporting evidence.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law
(yes, I know wiki is not proof, but if you care, you can find a basic physics textbook)”

Matt, and Sean, you are both wrong in your interpretations of the behavior of springs.

Matt, you are wrong in saying “Except that is not true” because your second sentence is completely consistent with Eric’s statement. Thus it’s obvious that you didn’t understand it. What do you think “another 300 lbs” means? It means 600 lbs for two inches, then 900 lbs for three, etc. Eric was using the correct term, force, in his original sentence because weight in pounds is a measure of force (mass x acceleration). It does take greater weight (force) to move the spring an equvalent distance as you compress more and more.

If the spring took the same amount of force to move the equivalent distance as it was compressed more and more then it would completely collapse once this force was met or exceeded.

Sean, I think you’ve confirmed your understanding of both physics and math. The math in the Wikipedia article you linked to actually confirms Mike’s claim. In order to compress a 300 lb/in spring from it’s resting state by one inch requires a 300 lb force, by two inches requires a 600 lb force, by three inches requires a 600 lb force, etc. Likewise the spring would have only compressed by half an inch if a force of 150 lbs was applied.

So the response of the spring to a linear increase in force is a linear decrease in length.

What Eric got wrong was thinking that the force/length relationship was “logarithmic”. It’s not.

Stomata index data are calibrated, using… ice cores. The SI data are accurate to +/- 10 ppmv (at best). But the main problem is that the calibration is at a the recent (local for stomata) CO2 level. Thus if you compare the SI index in The Netherlands of the past century with ice core/atmospheric CO2 from Antarctica, you level off the local bias (at 20 m height for oak leaves in this example) of the past century.

If you then compare the SI levels say of the MWP or LIA, you can see a larger variability than the ice core data, not because the “global” CO2 levels were that different, but because the ecosystems changed from marshes to forests and destruction/use forests by humans over the centuries (as been recorded for The Netherlands), thus the “local” CO2 levels were more variable, as these are today. See:http://www.chiotto.org/cabauw.html

The 0.05 seems a little underestimated, as there is an inverse correlation between (low) cloud cover and TSI. See fig.1 in Kristjánsson e.a.:http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/2002GL015646.pdf
Whatever the mechanism that changes the cloud cover (GCR or not), this should fortify the solar influence.

The deuterium correction by Jouzel, Vimeux, e.a. alters the temperature record somewhat, which gives even a better correlation with the CO2 record, but doesn’t alter the timing: the temperature (and CH4 record) still is at minimum before the CO2 record starts to decrease. In my graphic of the Eemian, both the Petit, Fisher, e.a. and the Jouzel, Vimeux, e.a. temperature interpretations are plotted:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html

I though WsubS = 1/2kx^2 … which would suggest that the work varies as the square of the distance required to compress the spring, but that work/length ratio should be linear in the distance to be compressed? Am I hopelessly muddled here?

“And even said small underlying signal may be due or mostly due to a steady (c. 1°F) three-century long recovery from the low point of the LIA to the current Optimum. AGW supporters loudly pooh-pooh this premise, but not for any convincing reason I have ever read.”

This graph of Hadley CET is based on actual unsmoothed data. Are we recovering thron the episode 300 years ago or the one in the late 1800’s? Perhaps we need to define a little ice age so we can better tell when it ended!

If we are recovering from the mid 1800’s episode the rebound might be expected to continue for some time-at present it is exceptionally weak.

Ellie in Belfast.

Thanks for your kind comments on my Beck posting. To those who comment on any of my posts-kind ot otherwise- I am sorry if I do not always reply to you (if one is needed) but it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of all the threads as they are growing so fast.

The ability to link directly to someones comments and numbering (as per CA) would greatly help conversations. This is not a criticism of a great blog but just a recognition that WUWT’s deserved popularity is making it difficult to keep a handle on everything.

George E. Smith (11:09:07) : At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

Hmmmm… where’d the ice come from? “”

Maybe from the warmer oceans, which are not at “Vostok Temperatures”

My Handbook of Chemistry and Physics does not have saturated water vapor pressures below -15 C.

It is well known that Antarctica is the driest continent on earth. And Vostok does have a summer. I’ve never seen any number for the depth of the Vostok ice cores; only that they go back 7-800,000 years. Can’t go back much further because you run into liquid water; and they don’t want to bore into Lake Vostok, or whatever thery call that pool of water under the ice.

My colleagues and I have attempted to post dozens of comments to this site only to have them blocked. Are you afraid of a real scientific discussion? Sad, because without discussion, there is no science.

You, and your guest bloggers, are certainly not “scientists.”

REPLY: Well with an email address that doesn’t resolve “akjdflka@fjadsk.com” which is what you posted under, I tend to doubt your claim. Feel free to contact me with your name and organization, here to: info { at } surfacestations dawt org and I’ll be happy to ensure you get heard, otherwise I think you are just another angry anonymous ranter.- Anthony

The topic of CO2 and climate from long ago periods brings to mind a missing piece from opinions that I am reading here. Climate depends on your address. Does now. Did then. Old addresses migrated around the globe both latitudinally and longitudinally. And from low to high altitude. What was once ocean front property could now be in the middle of a current continent. Old fossels that were once next to the beach at sea level are now at the top of a mountain peak far from any body of water. Therefore CO2 had different sinks and sources during these old periods than we have now. Climates and CO2 sinks and sources back then must be put into “back then” address context and must be talked about in terms of weather variations possible within each of those contextual climates.

I would think that the body of water that surrounds England would have a rather large affect on England’s temperature. Why is this elephant in the room not the major first point of weather variation but they will take the flea and examine its every orifice?

Frank Lansner:
“Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.”

Svalgaard:
“Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.”

Yes, I do not agree with you on the impact of solar activity, but this is not my essential point here.

Some believe roughly: “You cant find any other way to explain bigger tempereature differences than CO2, and despite CO2 is lagging temperature etc. we have to accept CO2 as the reason.” .

Whatever caused major temperature differences (for ex. the Maunder minimum), it was not caused by CO2 (– according to any CO2 graph I have seen). So if whatever condition caused such temperature changes continued 20-25.000 years, what temperature effect would that have? That’s the point here, sunspots or not.

“I think it is time for real scientists in the climate community to take stock and decide that the GCM models do not work”

Indeed. If models’ performance could be improved by adusting to past data, you’d think we’d have crossed this Rubicon. Instead it’s past data that’s being adjusted. Whatever the intent, science is no longer practicable when this is done other than by the observers themselves for systematic error.

Thank you for the reminder. Why is it that whenever I read Feynman I end up with a catch in my throat and find it difficult not to weep? Rhetorical question, I guess, but Feynman cuts through the carp in a gentle way then bam hits you with the underlying nugget of truth he’s prepared you for. And the beauty of that truth is such a relief from the day-to-day intellectual struggles that one simply lets go.

Very difficult to express, but I take a deep slow breath and feel refreshed.

“Matt, you are wrong in saying “Except that is not true” because your second sentence is completely consistent with Eric’s statement. Thus it’s obvious that you didn’t understand it. What do you think “another 300 lbs” means? It means 600 lbs for two inches, then 900 lbs for three, etc.”

I know how a spring works. I have an engineering degree, and I race cars for funzies on the weekend.

In my example, it takes 300lbs to compress 1 inch, but it does NOT require any more than another identical 300lbs to compress it another inch. Unless, of course, it is a progressive rate spring….

@Lucy
Er du fra Norge?
Anyway, its true that one the article i linked to about vulcanic-global warming link is a little so-so! A very pro GW article, just so that any GW´ers reading could see that also their own side saw this link.

or has it already found it’s proper place here as only a few off topic comments in a popular blog? – Mike Bryant

Well, that’s where it started life, when I thought of it yesterday. I’d been musing over the lines,

First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that:

…which seemed to have logic backward, and put the cart before the horse. And that set me thinking about horses and carts. The same logic applied to them would be that carts really only needed to be given a slight nudge to set them rolling, with the horses just galloping along in front of them thereafter. Which seemed sort of crazy – unless the horse and cart was on a downhill slope, in which case the logic would fit almost exactly. And that led into an imaginary DownhillWorld, in which everything was like that, and where everything had its ‘tipping point’ after which some ‘runaway’ unstoppable avalanche began. DownhillWorld stood in contrast with Flat Earth, in which horses really do pull carts, because there’s no gravitational acceleration helping to move carts. Or where gravitational acceleration was cancelled out. Flat Earth is maybe what you find at the bottom of a gravity well, and DownHillWorld is maybe what you find at a gravity peak (I may have inverted things here). At the bottom of a gravity well, things can’t fall any further. At a gravity peak, it’s a hard job to stop them falling.

And these two worlds seemed to describe the difference between the ‘flat earth’ sceptics and the global warming alarmists, with their tipping points and runaway warming. Alarmism (which can be lumped together with catastrophism of every kind) involves a sense that the world is very fragile, and things can fall apart at any moment, given a slight nudge. ‘Flat earthers’, by contrast, don’t see the world as being at all fragile, but instead as being very difficult to change at all. ‘Flat earthers’ try to change things for the better in small ways. Alarmists want to stop change, because change threatens the ever-so-delicate balance of the world.

This seemed like a good way to describe the differences underlying the two frames of reference, the two mentalities, without prejudicing either. We could be living in DownhillWorld, or on Flat Earth, or somewhere in between. The laws of physics are the same in all of them, but produce very different outcomes. So how can we tell which one we’re living in? There are lots of little catastrophes that take place in our world all the time. Everyone has the experience of when a cup of coffee reaches its ‘tipping point’ at the edge of a table, and a ‘runaway’ process begins. There are ‘runaway’ avalanches of rocks and snow. There are ‘runaway’ forest fires. There are ‘runaway’ epidemics like bubonic plague. We even make use of these catastrophic processes, as when we pour milk out of a bottle into a cup of coffee, tilting it to the ‘tipping point’ where a ‘runaway’ milk flow commences. So it’s not as if our world is devoid of some DownhillWorld behaviours.

But that’s about as far as I’ve managed to take the idea, after just a day or so of turning it over, like some found object on a beach. Maybe it can go places. But I don’t see a book in it just yet. I guess it just looked to me like an interesting way to think about where ‘alarmists’ and ‘denialists’ might be coming from, what underpins their thinking, and in that manner maybe enabling a better dialogue between the two rival systems. Is it really a complete accident that Jim Hansen comes out of NASA, where just everybody spends their time thinking about moving bodies in free fall? Perhaps DownhillWorld is what is naturally found in outer space.

(I should mention that I’m currently constructing a computer simulation model of the solar system, so I’ve been thinking about these things. I came here a few weeks ago to ask for (and gratefully receive) advice how to get the positions and velocities of the planets (I was directed to NASA, of course). The simulation is now working, and it looks very good. The planets stay in pretty stable orbits, and go round in pretty much the time they are supposed to. I’m now trying to construct a spinning earth, with the continents mapped onto it, to slot into the model. I may be back for more advice soon.)

“In my example, it takes 300lbs to compress 1 inch, but it does NOT require any more than another identical 300lbs to compress it another inch.”

Yeah, and 300 lbs + 300 lbs = 600 lbs. Which is more force than is needed at one inch of compression. What the Eric said was correct when he said, “… as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ” You certainly can not compress the spring the equivalent distance using the same or less force. You have to use greater force. You have to push with the same force as before plus some more, which means it’s greater force.

You don’t just push with 300lbs of force stop at one inch and then push with another 300lbs of force to get it to compress two inches. You push with 300lbs of force and it will stop compressing at one inch, then you must push with 600 lbs of force to get to two inches.

This is different from pushing a box along a level surface which requires the same force no matter how far you push it.

However, integrated over the yearly cycle, the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth is very nearly unchanged as the eccentricity of the orbit changes (or, for that matter, the tilt of the axis changes in magnitude or precesses)…Hence, there is very little radiative forcing due directly to this change.

Work is force over a distance. In the example used, the ideal spring rated at 300lbs/in will exert zero resistive force when fully extended and 300 lbs when compressed to an inch. The behavior is linear so the average force you need to expend is 150 lbs over that first inch of movement. So 150 pounds times one inch is 150 pound inches.

Over the second inch you need to push 300lbs at first increasing linearly to 600 lbs. Which is an average of 450 lbs force pushed over a distance of another inch, another 450 pound feet of work.

Add that to the work done over the first inch and you get 600 pound feet to move it two inches.

If it required 300 lbs of force to push a box over a floor then you would expend 300 pound inches of work over the first inchs, same for every other inch. The amount of work done rises linearly with the distance. Push it 100 inches and you’ve done 30,000 pound inches of work.

The reason the work goes up as the square of the distance with the spring is because both the distance traveled and the force applied increase the further you compress the spring.

The work is actually the integral (area under) of the graph of the force applied. In the case of the box the force line is horizontal ( force y axis, distance pushed x axis) and the area under the graph grows linearly as you move along the x axis.

With the spring the graph of force is a line that slopes up. For a spring rated at 1 lb/inch the slope would be 1. The line goes through the points (0,0), (1,1), (2,2) etc. If you imagine it on graph paper you will see that only the bottom right half of the first unit square is below the graph, and has an area of 1/2. By the time you are at one inch you gain an additional full unit square, plus another 1/2 square. So the total 1/2 (from the first inch) + 1 1/2 from the second inch, which comes to 2. Which is (2)^2)/2
Move another inch, to inch three and you gain another 2 1/2 squares. Added on that makes 4 1/5, which is (3)^2/2.

BTW, I didn’t bother looking up the formula for the work that is required to be applied to a spring to compress it a certain amount. I merely deduced it.

“I though WsubS = 1/2kx^2 … which would suggest that the work varies as the square of the distance required to compress the spring, but that work/length ratio should be linear in the distance to be compressed? Am I hopelessly muddled here?”

Not sure how to interpret your sentence. If you are saying that you think the same amount of work is needed to compress a spring the next inch as you expended in the last inch then you are wrong. Springs push back with greater force as you compress them so of course the work involved goes up.

If springs didn’t push back with greater force as you compressed them then mounting things on springs wouldn’t work. If the spring compressed at all it would immediately bottom out. Suppose it was the spring of our example and a 300 pound object was on top and it had compressed by one inch. If the spring didn’t push with more force as it was compressed then we could add just one pound to cause it to bottom out, since the spring would never push up with more than 300 lbs of force. Thus unable to resist the 301 pound weight.

You don’t see your shocks bottoming out every time you get in the car, right?

You don’t just push with 300lbs of force stop at one inch and then push with another 300lbs of force to get it to compress two inches. You push with 300lbs of force and it will stop compressing at one inch, then you must push with 600 lbs of force to get to two inches.

F = kx …

I think you are falling foul of the ambiguity of English.

It takes 300lbs of force (I wish you would use Newtons) to compress the spring 1 inch, it takes another 300lbs of force to compress to the next inch (for a total of 600lbs for two inches of compression).

Your wording above leaves open the possibility that it takes 900lbs to get to two inches of compression.

I don’t even care if it is TSI. Why should that bother me?
If 3 planets and a moon warm up, not including Earth, it can only be
from an external source to the planets and that moon.
It surely is not Man.
Maybe it’s aliens (yuk!).
What else do we got external to the planets besides the Sun and the Galaxy?
Dark Energy or Dark Matter patches?
The Black Holes at the Galaxy Center?
Strobes from Quasars?
My point is if we are not actively looking for the cause of Solar System Warming or Cooling, we are not going to find the answer.

“as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”

No, it doesn’t. IT requires the exact same *additional* force to move it another inch. The way I read it originally, I read that it took 300lbs to move it one inch, and an additional (300+X)lbs to move it another inch.

“You don’t just push with 300lbs of force stop at one inch and then push with another 300lbs of force to get it to compress two inches.”

Yes, actually that is exactly right.

” You push with 300lbs of force and it will stop compressing at one inch, then you must push with 600 lbs of force to get to two inches.”

That paper concludes: “We conclude that this new analysis significantly weakens the evidence for the cosmic ray-cloud coupling suggested by Svensmark [1998].”

The correlation has only been observed over a short period of time and does not mean there is any physical connection, especially since they cast doubt on Svensmark’s mechanism, so i cannot take this as evidence for anything.

Frank Lansner (12:50:04) :“Ten thousand years of Maunder Minimum Sun would cool the climate system 0.05 degrees.”
Yes, I do not agree with you on the impact of solar activity, but this is not my essential point here.
So if whatever condition caused such temperature changes continued 20-25.000 years, what temperature effect would that have? That’s the point here, sunspots or not.
First, you muddy the waters with all that CO2 hate-speak. The essential point is that whatever caused the LIA would not be operating for 20,000 years. The climate warms and cools on time scales of centuries [or even decades] no matter what the Sun does. When I referred to a Maunder Minimum condition that was, of course, referred to the Sun. So, if the Sun were the only variable, a non-varying Sun at Maunder Minimum level [just about where it is today], would not prevent those climate swings from coming and going.

1
02
2009
gary gulrud (13:40:51) :
“I think it is time for real scientists in the climate community to take stock and decide that the GCM models do not work”

Indeed. If models’ performance could be improved by adusting to past data, you’d think we’d have crossed this Rubicon. Instead it’s past data that’s being adjusted. Whatever the intent, science is no longer practicable when this is done other than by the observers themselves for systematic error.

Thank you for the reminder. Why is it that whenever I read Feynman I end up with a catch in my throat and find it difficult not to weep? Rhetorical question, I guess, but Feynman cuts through the carp in a gentle way then bam hits you with the underlying nugget of truth he’s prepared you for. And the beauty of that truth is such a relief from the day-to-day intellectual struggles that one simply lets go.

Very difficult to express, but I take a deep slow breath and feel refreshed.

1
02
2009
MattN (14:00:10) :
“Matt, you are wrong in saying “Except that is not true” because your second sentence is completely consistent with Eric’s statement. Thus it’s obvious that you didn’t understand it. What do you think “another 300 lbs” means? It means 600 lbs for two inches, then 900 lbs for three, etc.”

I know how a spring works. I have an engineering degree, and I race cars for funzies on the weekend.

In my example, it takes 300lbs to compress 1 inch, but it does NOT require any more than another identical 300lbs to compress it another inch. Unless, of course, it is a progressive rate spring….

This is obviously correct since the earth is pretty much a perfect sphere. I know it’s slightly pear shaped but to such a minor degree that it can be ignored. The shadow it would cast is identical no matter what it’s orientation.

His first statement, “The Milankovitch oscillations themselves cause very little net radiative forcing…They just change the distribution of the solar radiation hitting the earth” was wrong and you corrected him on that.

Now one might thing that how elliptical the orbit is does not effect total radiation hitting the earth when averaged over the entire year, but that is not true. The reason it is not true is because an orbiting body moves faster when it is closer, and slower when it is farther. With a more elliptical orbit it spends more time further away.

Also it turns out that there must be a conservation of kinetic and potential energy in the orbit. Moving the closer portion of the orbit in further actually happens deeper in the gravity well, thus for a unit n of change there is a large conversion of P to K. The outer end of the orbit must move out to compensate for the increased speed of the earth near the sun, but it does so in the less dense gravity field further from the sun. It therefore has to move proportionally further from the sun than the near point moved in.

Thus average distance from the sun for a more elliptical orbit is further given the same energy content. Both factors reinforce each other, and a more elliptical orbit spends more total time on the further portion of an orbit that is on average further from the sun.

That, orbital eccentricity, is the only component of the Milankovitch cycle that changes total radiation hitting the earth.

That doesn’t mean the other components aren’t huge climate factors. The patterns of sunlight hitting the earth in relation to orbit is extremely important. Just image if the axis of the earth were inclined 90 degrees, and pointed at the sun twice a year. The north pole would have sunlight for half the year, and the south pole the other half. During their alternate summers it would get much hotter than the hottest place on earth now. There would be extreme wind patterns, etc.

Timing between these effects matter a lot also. If in the above example the Arctic summer coincided with a highly elliptical orbit at it’s closest point to the sun the temperatures would be even higher.

This is way of topic and I would as soon you not post it, but think about it instead, how the heck can I deal with this.

I was getting ready to attend the winter meeting of the AAPT that is scheduled in two weeks, I feel obligated as a section officer to go; but today I recieved a promotional email telling me that I would have the opportunity there to hear the great Al Gore speak.

Now here is a guy who has never passed a physics course and has done more damage to physics education than anyone I can think of. Now I am wasting my hard earned registration money to pay for his BS dog and pony show. I don’t dare say this too publicly as I could put funding for some projects in jeopardy. Do you have any members of APS or AAPT among your posters who could post on this travesty.

Yeah, and if you’d read my original comment you’ll see that I understand that and said that you were correct. What I’m saying is that this is exactly what Eric is claiming also. So it is only your first sentence is wrong. You misread Eric.

Analogy:Eric: The Sun is big.Matt: Eric you are incorrect. The sun is large.Me: Your second sentence is right but so is Eric’s. Your first is wrong.

Now you did it again. I said: “as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”
Then you said: “No, it doesn’t. IT requires the exact same *additional* force to move it another inch. ”

Again, your first sentence is wrong precisely because your second sentence is equivalent to my sentence. Requiring the exact same additional force is the same as requiring greater total force. Neither Eric nor I claimed it required greater additional force. We just claimed it required greater force.

You are just misunderstanding us. I think you’d agree with the sentence “as and object increases in weight by multiples of ten pounds, it requires greater force to lift” Not sure why you ignore the fact that the sentence is by default about the total weight of the object and total force. It’s not about how much “additional” force is required. Obviously ten additional pounds of force is required to lift the object for every ten pounds added.

“I wish you would use Newtons”
Not my example, and doesn’t make a difference.

“You don’t just push with 300lbs of force stop at one inch and then push with another 300lbs of force to get it to compress two inches. You push with 300lbs of force and it will stop compressing at one inch, then you must push with 600 lbs of force to get to two inches.”

“Your wording above leaves open the possibility that it takes 900lbs to get to two inches of compression.”

That’s NOT my original nor Eric’s wording. It’s a restatement of one possible interpretation of Matt’s wording. I was pointing out that his wording is ambiguous. That’s why the word “don’t” is injected. It’s his injection of the word “addition” that’s the problem. His word “additional” can be interpreted as either something to “mathematical addition to the original” or as “another separate additional force”.

I went out of my way to agree with one interpretation of Matt’s wording. I said, “Yeah, and 300 lbs + 300 lbs = 600 lbs.” Then I pointed out that this was in agreement with what Eric said.

The only reason why I could think that Matt would disagree with Eric was because he was taking a second incorrect interpretation of his own sentence.

I then put together a sentence to show the other possible interpretation. I substituted “addition” with “another”, meaning another separate action. Now perhaps that was ambigous standalone but it isn’t with the sentence that immediately follows it. Let me inject context from each sentence into the other.

“You don’t just push with 300lbs of force stop at one inch and then push with another 300lbs of force [unlike the second sentence where 600 lbs is used] to get it to compress two inches. You push with 300lbs of force and it will stop compressing at one inch, then you must push with 600 lbs of force to get to two inches [, not 300 lbs in another action after you stopped the first].”

You can’t compress the spring further by pushing with another action that only exerts 300 pounds of force. It won’t go further (move an equivalent distance) unless, as Eric said, “greater force” is used.

I don’t know where you get 900 lbs from this. I said that the first action stopped. I already showed the proper addition in the prior paragraph. Sure if you lift the sentence (like Matt did in is followup) and take it out of context, then it gets more and more ambigous.

Long and short of it is that Eric was right all along about needing a “greater force” to compress the spring further, and Matt misunderstood him.

“Thank you for the reminder. Why is it that whenever I read Feynman I end up with a catch in my throat and find it difficult not to weep? Rhetorical question, I guess, but Feynman cuts through the carp in a gentle way then bam hits you with the underlying nugget of truth he’s prepared you for. And the beauty of that truth is such a relief from the day-to-day intellectual struggles that one simply lets go.

Very difficult to express, but I take a deep slow breath and feel refreshed.”

Feynman had that (apparently) rare ability to perform superior science at the highest level (he won a 1/3 share of the 1965 Nobel prize for QED), AND he could communicate complex ideas in clear, understandable terms. I attribute much of my success, however limited, to emulating that communication technique.

I especially like his account of his days in New Mexico working on the bomb project, when the foremost scientists would come to him as a sounding board for their new theories. Feynman was not swerved by anyone’s reputation or consensus; if their theories did not measure up to the data or fundamental laws, he debunked them then and there.

One can only wonder what he would have to say about the current state of climate-warming science.

@Leif.
I dont hate CO2, its the other way around :-)
(retorical, im sorry, could not let it be…)
Honestly, I think i just try to understand nature just as i believe you do.

In context with the Maunder minimum i understand that you are saying that whatever conditions brought it about, it could not continue for 20.000 years.
Is this opinion specific for the Maunder minimum, or would you say the same for
Middle age warm period, Roman warm period, Sporer min, and the long warm period 5-6-7 thousand years ago?

If none of the causes for these temperature variations “could not last for 20.000 year”, would you then join AGW and conclude: “then it must be CO2″?

You write:”When I referred to a Maunder Minimum condition that was, of course, referred to the Sun. So, if the Sun were the only variable, a non-varying Sun at Maunder Minimum level [just about where it is today], would not prevent those climate swings from coming and going.
”
Ok, i think i know what you are saying.

Now that you are “online” i would like to ask:
Yes, the solar condition is now as in the Maunder minimum, except the Maunder minimum lasted 50 years and got much colder.
1) Could the length of the Maunder minimum be predicted from our knowledge today?
2) If not, how do you know how long time a solar minimum in theory could last?

One can only wonder what he would have to say about the current state of climate-warming science.

Cargo cult science? He could be very cutting.

I had the luck to hear him in two workshops, one in 1964 and the other in 1981 or so. He was soo much like a child in the way he saw the world, as a total experience. I remember him going down a ravine in Crete, in company with other theoreticians, bathing in the waters while discussing QCD etc. Took them twice the time of the rest of us to arrive at the beach.

He said that he remembered the moments the Feynman diagrams jelled in his head, he remembered he was on his bed with his feet on the wall!! ( maybe the extra blood helped. He had eidetic memory, he could read a book, page and figure numbers, from memory).

He was also the proposer of the parton model, a useful tool which finally led to QCD, but it took some time for Feynman to be reconciled with QCD. But he did. A lesson to all these modelers that there is a time to discard a model, if the data says so.
( It was the reason why I was at that workshop, our data was saying that there was more than the parton model).

Frank, one of your volcanic URL’s seems to be a right fraud, we’ve just had some fun exploring here. Upshot is, it’s as I thought, no recent seismic activities increase, rather, the correlation appears to be with solar low activity.

Hi Lucy. In a pdf of a paper I lost in a disk crash recently, the graph showed a lag of 30 years or so between changes in solar activity and volcanic activity. If it is right, we are in for some serious action volcanically, as the effect of the strong cycles from the start of the eighties kicks in. I will try to replicate the graph. Drop me another email, I lost your address.

The IPCC states that increasing atmospheric CO2 is the primary cause of global warming – in effect, the IPCC states that the future is causing the past. The IPCC’s core scientific conclusion is illogical and false

I did interprete that as that you think that there can’t be a feedback of CO2 on temperature, which is not true…

But no worry. We agree that the influence of CO2 on temperature at best is weak and at “worst” is not even measurable…

Another point of discussion:

It is interesting to note, however, that the natural seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 ranges up to ~16ppm in the far North, whereas the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is only ~2ppm. This reality tends to weaken the “material balance argument”.

I don’t see how this weakens the material balance over a year or several years. The seasonal variation on global scale is about 5 ppmv, or 10 GtC in and out the atmosphere. Human emissions approach 8 GtC/yr, but only one way: towards the atmosphere. The residual variability of the seasonal changes is +/- 3 GtC over a year (mainly caused by temperature and precipitation), the average result is 3.5 GtC net sink per year. That means zero addition (as mass, not as exchange of molecules) by nature over the full seasonal cycle over the past 50 years. Thus the mass balance still shows that the sole source of the increase are the human emissions…

I have a problem about a non-topic item here: the historical data, as interpreted by Ernst Beck. I have a lot to say about the data where his interpretation is based on, but that needs far more space in a discussion on its own (which lasts now for a few years with him!), than as off-topic here. Can we start a different thread on that?

The correlation has only been observed over a short period of time and does not mean there is any physical connection, especially since they cast doubt on Svensmark’s mechanism, so i cannot take this as evidence for anything.

I agree, two solar cycles is quite short, but it seems that in both cycles a similar response of (low) cloud cover is visible, whatever the mechanism. That is empirical evidence. Moreover, the solar cycle is visible in ozone levels, jet stream position, rain patterns, ocean surface temperatures, etc. over much longer time periods. Each of them is part of climate, beyond what only TSI shows…

The above excellent article highlights the difficulties of determination of cause and effect relationships which are a severe problem when attempting to evaluate every aspect of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. And it raises the point of why atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration changes are observed to follow global temperature changes at all time scales.

I write to suggest that the ~800 year delay observed in the Vostock ice cores is a function of the thermohaline circulation. And the available data indicates that this same effect is the most likely explanation of the measured recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

It is often claimed that ‘ocean acidification’ (i.e. change to the pH of the ocean surface layer that is reducing the alkalinity of the surface layer) is happening as a result of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. However, I have repeatedly pointed out that the opposite is also possible because the deep ocean waters now returning to ocean surface could be altering the pH of the ocean surface layer with resulting release of CO2 from the ocean surface layer. Indeed, no actual release is needed because massive CO2 exchange occurs between the air and ocean surface each year and the changed pH would inhibit re-sequestration of the CO2 naturally released from ocean surface.

Ocean pH varies from about 7.90 to 8.20 at different geographical locations but along coasts there are much larger variations from 7.3 inside deep estuaries to 8.6 in productive coastal plankton blooms and 9.5 in tide pools. The pH of the oceans is lowest in their most productive regions where upwellings of water from deep ocean occur.

It is thought that the average pH of the oceans decreased from 8.25 to 8.14 since the start of the industrial revolution (Jacobson M Z, 2005). And it should be noted that a decrease of pH from 8.2 to 8.1 corresponds with an increase of the CO2 in the air from 285.360 ppmv to 360.000 ppmv at solution equilibrium between air and ocean (calculations not published).

In other words, the ocean ‘acidification’ (estimated by Jacobson) is consistent with the change to atmospheric CO2 concentration for the estimated change to the solution equilibrium between air and ocean.

Thus, it is important to determine the cause/effect relationship between the changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration and the pH of the ocean surface layer: i.e. which of these changes is causing the other to change.

The upwelling regions having lowest pH suggests that the ocean pH is changing to alter the atmospheric CO2 concentration. And the Vostock ice core data suggests a reason why this is likely.

I am very sceptical of the ice core data because I think they indicate falsely low and very smoothed values for past atmospheric CO2 concentrations. I base this opinion on the works of Jaworowski (indeed, at his request I presented his paper on ice core analysis to the 2008 Heartland Climate Conference because illness forced his absence). However, I do think the ice cores indicate long-term changes to past atmospheric CO2 concentrations. And – as the above article says – the Vostock ice cores indicate that changes to atmospheric CO2 concentration follow changes to temperature by ~800 years. If this is correct, then the atmospheric CO2 concentration should now be rising as a result of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP).

This begs the question as to the cause of the ~800 year lag of atmospheric CO2 concentration after changes to temperature indicated by ice cores. And I suggest it is an effect of the thermohaline circulation.

The water now returning to the surface layer entered the deep ocean ~800 years ago during the MWP. Therefore, a release of oceanic CO2 in response to altered pH would concur with the ice core indications (assuming my acceptance of long-term trends in ice core data is correct). And this release could be expected to provide a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (of at least 1.5 ppm/year) as a result of the water now returning to the surface having entered deep ocean during the MWP.

Indeed, those who proclaim man-made global warming assert that heat from present global warming is going into the oceans and will return later. If so, then – for the same reasons – effects of the MWP must be returning now.

Several studies have shown that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration varies around a base trend of 1.5 ppm/year. A decade ago Calder showed that the variations around the trend correlate to variations in mean global temperature (MGT): he called this his ‘CO2 thermometer’. Now, Ahlbeck has submitted a paper for publication that finds the same using recent data. Reasons for this ‘CO2 thermometer’ are not known but they probably result from changes sea suface temperature.

So, there is strong evidence that MGT governs variations in the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration but there is no clear evidence of the cause of the steady – and unwavering – base trend of 1.5 ppm/year.

It is often suggested (e.g. by IPCC) that the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is accumulating in the air, and this could be the cause of the steady base trend. However, a rise related to the anthropogenic emission should vary with the anthropogenic emission, but the steady rise does not.

Simply, in the absence of more information, the anthropogenic emissions vary too much for them to be a likely cause of the steady rise of 1.5 ppm/year in atmospheric CO2 concentration that is independent of a temperature effect.

Please note that the annual anthropogenic emissions data need not vary with the atmospheric rise. Some of the emissions may be accounted in adjacent years so 2-year smoothing of the emissions data is warranted. And different nations may account their years from different start months so 3-year smoothing of the data is justifiable. However, the 5-year smoothing applied by the IPCC to get agreement between the anthropogenic emissions and the rise is not justifiable (they use it because 2-year, 3-year and 4-year smoothings fail to provide the agreement).

So, other possible explanations than the anthropogenic emissions deserve investigation.

I argue that a response to the MWP provided in the present by the thermohaline circulation is an explanation that does concur with the empirical evidence. Water now returning to the surface having entered deep ocean during the MWP may be inducing release of oceanic CO2 in response to altered pH, and this release could be expected to provide the steady increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (of at least 1.5 ppm/year) that is observed to be independent of temperature variations.

I hope this posting is a useful contribution to debate of the above excellent article.

You said, for example: First a big rapid temperature increase, and then an almost just as big, but a less rapid temperature fall.

Of course! It takes longer for ice to form than to melt. So, when insolation breaks the cold cycle, the GHG’s that process begets reinforce melting and away it goes till it gets too far out o balance and starts back the other way. But it takes a LOOOOONG time to snow down miles of ice.

(1) Only a 1 sigma change in the assumed albedo of the GCM models will make a 1C error about any scenario line

You are right and the climate videogames would probably be indeed called cargo cult science by Feynman .
But the reality is even is worse .
Albedo is mainly influenced by cloudiness , not by the surface reflectivity .
Not only the total suface (and volume and height) of clouds matters but also their spatial distribution .
A km² of clouds at the tropics has much more impact on the energy transfer than a km² clouds at the poles .
So as 1% of cloudiness variation impacts the energy transfer 10 times more than the supposed “forcing” through CO2 doubling , one must legitimately demand that the cloudiness be known and predicted with better than 0,1 % accuracy .
This accuracy extends of course to the spatial distribution too .
And that only if one supposes that the climate system is not chaotic what is a dubious assumption to say the least .

Now R.Lindzen has published a chart showing the cloudiness distribution in different climate “models” .
It was simply ridiculous .
The models didn’t even agree on the sense of variation with latitude let alone with the distribution .
When one realizes only this one simple , easy fact then the term video games takes a fully justified meaning .

When one sees on top that some of the most rabid AGWers are trying to explain us with deadly serious faces that the temperatures 100 millions years ago were solely the consequence of CO2 concentration , one only needs to ask them “And what was the cloudiness back then ? Pray tell .”

Try it , it is quite entretaining .
You only get blank stares of a robot who has been hard wired in a way that prevents him to understand even the easiest questions :)

As result of a long standing discussion, here the main points where we differ:

– The influence of the THC:
The 800 years lag indeed is visible in the Vostok record, but that holds for the large (about 10°C) temperature swing between cold periods and warm periods, where the transition takes more than 5,000 years (upgoing) or tenthousand(s) of years (downgoing). The overall ratio is about 8 ppmv/°C, or an increase of 0.0016 ppmv/year during the upgoing trend. An increase of 1.5 ppmv/year in current times as result of the THC seems a little overdone.

– The influence of the MWP-LIA transition:
In the high accumulation Law Dome ice core, the LIA shows a drop of about 6 ppmv CO2 for a drop of about 0.8°C (if one takes the reconstruction with the largest temperature amplitude, that is NOT Mann’s hockeystick!). The ice core shows a lag of about 50 years for CO2 and again a ratio of 8 ppmv/°C. The speed of decrease was about 0.06 ppmv/year (but smoothed in the ice core). Again 1.5 ppmv/year seems too high.

– The current variability:
The current variability of CO2 around the trend is about 3 ppmv/°C. This correlates quite good with the (sea) surface temperature, thus that is probably the cause of the variability. The trend itself is quite sure caused by the emissions, which are near double the observed increase. That the year-by-year increase shows only a reasonable correlation with the emissions is normal: the year-by-year increase is the result of two independent variables: emissions and temperature. In this case temperature acts as noise for the increase caused by human emissions and one need to average more years (3 and more) to show that the increase per year correlates well to the emissions per year:

A quite different view is if one looks at accumulated emissions and what has accumulated in the atmosphere: it is a near perfect match (at 53% of the emissions over the full 100+ years):
Thus the rise of the emissions and the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere are matched for any period in time longer than a few years…

Further, about the representativeness of the bubbles in ice cores of the ancient atmosphere:
That was effectively solved by the work of Etheridge over 10 years ago on three ice cores at Law Dome. He used different drilling techniques and measured in firn as good as in the ice core. There was an overlap of about 20 years between the ice core bubbles CO2 and direct measurements in the atmosphere of the south pole. The SPO measurements and the ice core and firn measurements matched within the accuracy of the ice core measurements (1 sigma: 1.2 ppmv).
Jaworowski’s objections include remarks which are physically impossible and most was answered by the work of Etheridge. See my response to Jaworowski:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html

This article correctly states that the temperature started to increase before the CO2 did at the end of an ice age. (This was apparently predicted by Hansen before it was observed in ice-cores, and is currently well known in climate science.) However, the interpretation that CO2 does not influence the temperature is wrong. Temperature and CO2 influence each other in both directions; it is a bit of a chicken-egg discussion. The IR absorbing qualities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases were measured in the laboratory over 100 years ago. This basic piece of physics doesn’t go away by pointing at ice cores. To the contrary, it makes the picture complete: The amplification of the initial warming by GHG and the ice albedo effect (http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/tipping_points_melting_ice/) are important to include when trying to understand the total amount of warming.

However, the current situation is clearly different from that at the end of the ice ages, since now we know that the extra CO2 is brought into the atmosphere by human activity. Currently, CO2 is not increasing in response to the warming, but rather due to human emissions, and as such it is now one of the driving forces of the warming. If you claim that the current increase in CO2 is due to the increasing temperature instead (not directly stated, but the reader is led to that conclusion, and rather successfully judged from the comments), then where did all the CO2 go that we’ve emitted so far? How come the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 has changed? (A reflection of a larger fraction of fossil carbon) And how could one reconcile the absence of warming from CO2 with the observed properties of this and other gases in the lab? And many more unanswerable questions.

Frank Lansner (00:32:00) :In context with the Maunder minimum i understand that you are saying that whatever conditions brought it about, it could not continue for 20.000 years.
More correct to say, “did not”, see below.

Is this opinion specific for the Maunder minimum, or would you say the same for Middle age warm period, Roman warm period, Sporer min, and the long warm period 5-6-7 thousand years ago?
Here you mix the Sun and the climate as if they are one and the same, or make the implicit assumption that one causes the other.

If none of the causes for these temperature variations “could not last for 20.000 year”, would you then join AGW and conclude: “then it must be CO2″?
Here one could ask: “if CO2 is not the cause, then it must be the Sun”. Both is there rhetorical black-and-white propositions are equally wrong.

Yes, the solar condition is now as in the Maunder minimum, except the Maunder minimum lasted 50 years and got much colder.
Again you make the assumption that there is a connection. The length of the minimum doesn’t matter, the temperature will just be a constant 0.05K lower.

1) Could the length of the Maunder solar minimum be predicted from our knowledge today?
2) Do you know how long time a solar minimum in theory could last?

Some people [e.g. ‘nobwainer’] would say ‘yes’ to both questions [albeit for wrong reasons]. From current dynamo theory it is thought [I know this is weak] that since the dynamo is self-sustaining that it cannot go away or weaken for too long. We have direct evidence from 14C over the past 11,000 years that Grand Minima didn’t last centuries or more: http://www.leif.org/research/14C-past-11000-years.png
The red curve is the 14C data. The large-scale changes are not solar, but are due to the changing magnetic field of the Earth [and we have other ways of corroborating this]. The black curve is a 500-year running mean, and the blue curve the difference which is believed to be a measure of the solar modulation.

If there is a constant difference between solar activity at ‘normal’ times and during a Maunder-type minimum, then there will be a constant temperature difference no matter how long the minimum lasts.

Ferdinand Engelbeen (02:46:49) :I agree, two solar cycles is quite short, but it seems that in both cycles a similar response of (low) cloud cover is visible, whatever the mechanism. That is empirical evidence.

As is so often the case when you find a coincidence based on a short stretch of data, with more data the effect goes away. This has happened with this coincidence too. The last ten years do not show the expected correlation.

Several studies have shown that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration varies around a base trend of 1.5 ppm/year. A decade ago Calder showed that the variations around the trend correlate to variations in mean global temperature (MGT): he called this his ‘CO2 thermometer’. Now, Ahlbeck has submitted a paper for publication that finds the same using recent data. Reasons for this ‘CO2 thermometer’ are not known but they probably result from changes sea suface temperature.

So, there is strong evidence that MGT governs variations in the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration but there is no clear evidence of the cause of the steady – and unwavering – base trend of 1.5 ppm/year.

It is often suggested (e.g. by IPCC) that the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is accumulating in the air, and this could be the cause of the steady base trend. However, a rise related to the anthropogenic emission should vary with the anthropogenic emission, but the steady rise does not.

Simply, in the absence of more information, the anthropogenic emissions vary too much for them to be a likely cause of the steady rise of 1.5 ppm/year in atmospheric CO2 concentration that is independent of a temperature effect.

Inspection of the Mauna Loa CO2 yearly emissions data indicate there isn’t really a steady (and “unwavering”!) 1.5 ppm base line rate of enhancement of atmosphereic CO2. During the early part of the record when emissions were a good bit lower (early mid 60’s) the rate of increase was low 0.7-0.9 ppm/yr, and as the rate of emissions rose throughout the 1970,s 80,s 90,s 00’s the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 has risen too. They’re averaging closer to 2 ppm/yr now.

That seems pretty clear. When emissions are low the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 is low, and when emissions are high the rate of increase of CO2 is generally high. That’s entirely as we might expect.

How about the year on year variation? There’s nothing very mysterious about that either I think. There’s a very large literature that indicates that interannual variation in the enhancement of atmospheric CO2 relates to ENSO, and its effects on tropical forest growth largely, and thus is bound to correlate with the interannual temperature variation since the latter two phenomena (ENSO and global temperature anomaly) are correlated.

So during strong El Nino years and shortly afterwards, the tropical forests are water-limited and grow poorly (“pull own” of CO2 from the atmosphere inefficient) and prone to wildfires. El Nino years are associated with high annual addition of CO2 to the atmosphere in the later part of the season and following the El Nino, which supplements manmade emissions. On the other hand during, or shortly after La Nina’s, the tropical forests have more optimal growth conditions and are more efficient in withdrawing CO2 from the atmosphere. The addition of CO2 to the atmosphere during the months after a La Nina is suppressed. We expect that the variation in CO2 increment to lag the temperature effect somewhat…and so they do by around 5 months.

Thus as our emissions add whatever yearly increment of CO2 to the atmosphere (the persistent and increasing rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age), so internal climate variation, and especially ENSO, provides “noise” on the rising trend largely through ENSO-related effects on tropical forest productivity…

There’s lots of research published on this. A possible starting point is:

I would like to caution you about taking reported co2 values from glaciers as being accurate. You might be able to observe trends, but certainly the accuracies of such values is put into grave doubt by z Jaworowski; z jaworowski, t v segalstad, n ono, “do glaciers tell a true atmospheric co2 story”, the science of total environment, 114 (1992) 227-284. z jaworoski is a veteran of about 12 ice core drillings. he mentions that up to 1985, that reported co2 concentrations varied rather evenly between 150 – 700 ppm with outriders over 1,000 ppm. after 1985, values over 350 ppm disappeared from literature which he claims is due to ignoring of up to 40% of the data. cooking the books is unethical and seems to be only tolerated in climate studies. he also states that shallow ice core values that can be related to direct atmospheric measurements are already 20 – 40% low. in this paper, he discusses the 20 some mechanical and chemical processes (fractionation) that greatly alter co2 values. just to mention 2; (1) the annual, reported formation of shallow pools of water a meter under the surface during the continuous solar radiation of summer that greatly alters the relative concentration of gases (co2 is approximately 25 times as soluble as o2 and 50 times as soluble as n2 in ice water), and (2) the gross contamination of the ice core in the extraction process brought about by the necessary introduction of a large, continuous amount of hydrocarbon (at vostok; jet fuel, tri-tetra cl ethane, mono ethy ether of glycol and their manufacturing impurities). these hydrocarbons are use in a failed attempt to maintain density, to lubricate the drill and as an antifreeze. contact with the ice core occurs just as large amounts of micro and micra cracks are forming from thermal and mechanical stress that allows penetration of the ice core, even to the very center.

Also look at ernst-georg beck compilation of over 90,000 direct measurements of co2 by the classical chemical method between the years of 1812 – 1961; “180 years of atmospheric co2 gas analysis by chemical methods”. energy & environment, vol. 18, no. 2 (2007). He states that when performed right, this method obtained an accuracy of better than 3% after 1857 (improved to 1 – 2% in the 20th century). His plot shows substantial variations (by 160 ppm) in co2 concentration during this period of 150 years and not the almost flat 280 ppm portrayed by the ipcc, which only shows a steady substantial increase in the 20th century. in fact, beck shows that the concentration of co2 reached a value of 450 ppm in 1942 before returning to 320 – 330 ppm in the 50s. this large peak being the result of the substantial warming of the 20s and 30s and the hugh amounts of co2 dumped into atmosphere by ww2. in the last 10 years of use, the classical method agreed with the newly developed instrumental method with a maximum disagreement of 10 ppm.

Of course! It takes longer for ice to form than to melt. So, when insolation breaks the cold cycle, the GHG’s that process begets reinforce melting and away it goes till it gets too far out o balance and starts back the other way. But it takes a LOOOOONG time to snow down miles of ice.

So, what prevents it (I assume you are referring to the climate here) from getting out of balance? Also, what are the bounds, since your statement assumes them?

You people are ridiculous. This is fifth grade stuff.

I guess one has to be beyond fifth grade to start to question what keeps the climate not too far from the straight and narrow.

“z jaworoski is a veteran of about 12 ice core drillings. he mentions that up to 1985, that reported co2 concentrations varied rather evenly between 150 – 700 ppm with outriders over 1,000 ppm. after 1985, values over 350 ppm disappeared from literature which he claims is due to ignoring of up to 40% of the data. cooking the books is unethical and seems to be only tolerated in climate studies. he also states that shallow ice core values that can be related to direct atmospheric measurements are already 20 – 40% low.”

I am rather sceptical of the ice core records as I tend to believe the historic co2 measurements which used proven technolopgy and showed levels at least as high as today. If co2 was only consistently 280ppm what is the main driver through the numerous warm and cool peeriods in mans history?

Do you know if the original data is available that jaworoski used and do you know of any definitive papers that explain how the ice core process is carried out step by step? It all seems highly theoretical to me and based on a lot of assumptions.

I am also curious as to how many expert people there are in ice core science and what qualifications are needed-Physics? Maths? Statistics? Chemistry? Modelling?

George E. Smith (11:09:07) : At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

This is nonsense, there is no way to get CO2 ice there with a partial pressure of less than 0.001 atm! Check out the phase diagram of CO2:

Of course! It takes longer for ice to form than to melt. So, when insolation breaks the cold cycle, the GHG’s that process begets reinforce melting and away it goes till it gets too far out o balance and starts back the other way. But it takes a LOOOOONG time to snow down miles of ice.

So, what prevents it (I assume you are referring to the climate here) from getting out of balance? Also, what are the bounds, since your statement assumes them?

Two things prevent the climate “getting out of balance”, and these essentially constitute “bounds”. The first is that the insolation changes (Milankovitch cycles) provide a persistent forcing in both the warming and cooling phases that both drive and limit the effects (after all the total insolation during Milankovitch cycles hardly varies…it’s the pattern of insolation that predominates, and the insolation effects are cyclic rather than unidirectional, obviously).

Secondly the albedo contribution, which is a very significant feedback , is essentially self-limiting. Much of the albedo feedback (on the warming phase) is due to ice melt. This likely occurs very quickly on the rising (deglaciation) periods of the ice age cycles, since even a little surface melting in the absence of full melt greatly reduces the albedo, since meltwater on ice yields a strong reduction in ice reflectance. Once the ice has retreated back to the very low latitudes the positive feedback diminishes.

And Beck’s historical data need a lot of caution too. Most of the supposed peak value around 1942 is caused by measurements over land near huge sources and sinks. This gives in average a huge positive bias. See my comment on the historical data at:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html

Robert Bateman (09:08:06) :why the sunspots are getting lower in contrast?
Is it just weakening magnetic fields independent of Solar Cycle?
The physics is this: a lower magnetic field means that pressure balance must be achieved by a higher temperature. The contrast decreases as the temperature difference with the rest of the photosphere decreases.
Now, why the magnetic field should be lower, we don’t know.

Thank you, Leif.
Lower could mean just plain weaker, not reaching normal heights, directed elsewhere, cancellng out, or something else entirely.
Would then the magnetic field be lower for the whole Sun, or just in the spots?

Please, see my reaction in the comments section of what Dr. Spencer wrote… The decrease of d13C over one year and several years is similar, simply because humans add so much low 13C CO2 in the atmosphere that the natural year by year variability plays no role at all (the seasonal variations themselves are not involved in this story).

Even if you don’t have a clue of what you have selled and bought over a day, if you start with adding 1,000 euro/dollar or whatever in your cash register and end the day with 500 euro, you don’t need any detail of the transactions to know that you lost 500 euro that day… If that is repeated every day, that you start the day adding more money than you see at the end of the day as increase in your cash register, you can be pretty sure that you are in bad bussiness…

Thus if humans emit 8 GtC/year and at the end of the year some 4 +/- 3 GtC is found in the atmosphere (over the past 50 years: 55% of the emissions), one can be sure that:
– nature (whatever the temperature variation) is a net sink for CO2 and adds nothing (in mass) to the atmosphere, but there may be huge exchanges of CO2 with oceans and vegetation within that year.
– humans are responsible for the increase.

But that doesn’t tell us anything about the effect of the increase of CO2 on temperature…

Ferdinand, the biogenic fluence is also at work here, expelling 13C as carbon is laid up and returning 12C on die off. Note the term ‘variance’, the pattern of variation at each data point. Suess believed the decrease in 13C was anthropogenic, but the F-Test proves that merely noting a decrease is inadequate.

My point is that this was the only extant method of ‘tagging’ the anthropogenic contribution. Looking at the MLO and AIRS daily fluctuations I believe the oceanic-atmospheric flux in CO2 could be as high as 80Gtons daily.

A tiny increase in oceanic supply of CO2 to the surface from below, or an increase in global average SST is more than enough to provide the change in “Mass balance”, invalidating your assertion. In any event, the anthropogenic fluence is so small it is evidently scrubbed from view; you are unable to honestly prove its presence.

Robert Bateman (11:40:00) :Lower could mean just plain weaker, not reaching normal heights, directed elsewhere, canceling out, or something else entirely.
Bill L finds the darkest area within each spot and measures the field there. The field is pretty much radial and uniform there, so the measurement shows simply that the field strength is smaller.

Would then the magnetic field be lower for the whole Sun, or just in the spots?
This we don’t know. Conventional wisdom has it that the field we see spread out over the Sun comes from spots in the first place, so the two fields should go together, but we don’t really know.

Have a look at this 14C graph Frank, It shows clearly how the Sun went into grand minima mode over the previous 11000 years and shows how beyond 90 years duration is not likely. There is a very good reason for that, the disturbance that slows the Sun simply doesnt last longer than 90 years.

And here is his explanation of what is going on:
Solar Phys. DOI 10.1007/s11207-008-9293-6
Grand Minima of Solar Activity and the Mean-Field Dynamo
I.G. Usoskin · D. Sokoloff · D. Moss
Received: 1 September 2008 / Accepted: 9 November 2008
Abstract We demonstrate that a simple solar dynamo model, in the form of a Parker migratory dynamo with random fluctuations of the dynamo governing parameters and algebraic saturation of dynamo action, can at least qualitatively reproduce all the basic features of solar Grand Minima as they are known from direct and indirect data. In particular, the model successfully reproduces such features as an abrupt transition into a Grand Minimum and the subsequent gradual recovery of solar activity, as well as mixed-parity butterfly diagrams during the epoch of the Grand Minimum. The model predicts that the cycle survives in some form during a Grand Minimum, as well as the relative stability of the cycle inside and outside of a Grand Minimum. The long-term statistics of simulated Grand Minima appears compatible with the phenomenology of the Grand Minima inferred from the cosmogenic isotope data.We demonstrate that such ability to reproduce the Grand Minima phenomenology is not a general feature of the dynamo models but requires some specific assumption,
such as random fluctuations in dynamo governing parameters. In general, we conclude that a relatively simple and straightforward model is able to reproduce the Grand Minima phenomenology remarkably well, in principle providing us with a possibility of studying the physical nature of Grand Minima.

I had a long look at all the Neutron Monitors that allowed or had info to display.
Would it surprise you to learn that there is a tendency for the counts to be higher the closer one got to the North Magnetic Pole?
Would really have to pull in all the stations to get a more definative look, but there is a possibility it might tell us more than we already know.

Dr. Spencer was talking about the year-by-year variability, that is over the seasons, not what happens as result of the seasonal changes. The seasonal changes in d13C surely are biogenic, but if you use that as base (and the change in oxygen levels as alternative), then you will see that about 50 GtC per year is exchanged with the atmosphere. That is not important. What is important is how much is left at the end of the seasonal cycle. That is about 1.4 GtC/year more sink than source. Thus vegetation is a net sink for CO2, thus a sink for preferential 12C, leaving more 13C in the atmosphere, in every year of the past 1.5 decade (before that a slight release by vegetation might have occured). See:http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5462/2467

The same problem for oceanic CO2. Deep oceans have a d13C level of about zero per mil. Ocean surface, thanks to algues between +1 and +4 per mil (but decreasing). The atmosphere is currently at – 8 per mil. Even with a shift in isotope composition at release from the oceans, the ocean CO2 should give an increase in d13C of the atmosphere, not a decrease as seen now.

Thus the F-test only proves that the human “fingerprint” is much stronger than the much smaller effect of vegetation and oceans on d13C levels.

BTW you ar looking at AIRS monthly variations, not daily. CO2 variations over the seasons are huge, but oceans (90 GtC/yr) and vegetation (50 GtC/yr) work in opposite directions. That has as result that the world average (NH+SH) seasonal variation is about 5 ppmv/°C or 10 GtC/°C temperature difference. That is all. The short term influence of temperature on CO2 increase speed is about 3 ppmv/°C, the long term influence for the past near million years is about 8 ppmv/°C. That is all.

Anyway, as long as humans add more CO2 than is measured in the atmosphere, there is no room for any additional CO2 from nature. No matter how small or huge the rest of the circulating flows are. As long as no CO2 disappears to space…

Looks like more model nonsense. How any reputable scientist can claim the output of the solar cycle is controlled by a random process each time amazes me. The 14C record is anything but a random event and follows a curve of solar power that matches exactly the power of the angular momentum curve.

Usoskin fudges his own graph to eliminate “Dalton” type events knocking out 2/3’s of the previous grand minima. How would his model explain grand minima events every 172 yrs avg…..hardly random.

It is apparent that I did not write with sufficient clarity for you to understand me. So, I write to try to clarify.

Firstly, let me agree with one of your points. I said the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration which is independent of temperature is “a steady and unwavering 1.5 ppmv per year”. You rightly point out that this was a ‘simplification too far’ in that the rise has increased. Yes, you are right.

For precision, I should have said the rise has a steady and unwavering increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration which is independent of temperature of 0.4 per cent per year and is about 1.5 ppmv per year since measurement began at Mauna Loa in 1958.

But then you wrongly assert:
“When emissions are low the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 is low, and when emissions are high the rate of increase of CO2 is generally high. That’s entirely as we might expect.”

That assertion is factually incorrect. In fact, the anthropogenic emissions do not relate to the change to atmospheric CO2 concentation at all.

Any two variables will seem to agree if they are given sufficient smoothing. As I said, the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year. Indeed, in some years the equivalent of almost all the anthropogenic emission stays in the air and in other years almost none. And I took the trouble to explain why annual data need not agree but smoothing over at most 3-years should. And I pointed out that IPCC use 5-year smoothing because 2-year, 3-year and 4-year smoothings fail to provide agreement between the anthropogenic emissions and the observed change to atmospheric CO2 concentation.

I am puzzled by your commenting:
“There’s a very large literature that indicates that interannual variation in the enhancement of atmospheric CO2 relates to ENSO, and its effects on tropical forest growth largely, and thus is bound to correlate with the interannual temperature variation since the latter two phenomena (ENSO and global temperature anomaly) are correlated.” etc.

My post pointed out that several studies have shown a relationship between temperature and variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration. As I said, Calder named this his ‘CO2 thermometer’ a decade ago. So, your comment agrees with my post, and I am puzzled as to why you think it does not.

From that you make a completely illogical conclusion saying;
“Thus as our emissions add whatever yearly increment of CO2 to the atmosphere (the persistent and increasing rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age), so internal climate variation, and especially ENSO, provides “noise” on the rising trend largely through ENSO-related effects on tropical forest productivity… “

Your use of the word “Thus” is totally unfounded and is denied by my main point that you failed to mention. That main point was that the pH of the oceans is lowest in their most productive regions where upwellings of water from deep ocean occur, and this suggests the ocean pH is changing to alter the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Also, you suggest that a “start” to reading the literature on causes of changes to atmospheric CO2 concentration would be Zeng (2005).

I beg to differ, and I suggest that a more cogent – and certainly a much more comprehensive – “start” to reading the peer-reviewed literature on this is
Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005)

Robert Bateman (15:11:26) :Would it surprise you to learn that there is a tendency for the counts to be higher the closer one got to the North Magnetic Pole? Would really have to pull in all the stations to get a more definative look, but there is a possibility it might tell us more than we already know.
No, this is no surprise at all. This is the way the Earth’s magnetic field filters the cosmic rays [working in essence as a mass-spectrometer] .

(I am a rather dessicated English Geologist, 29 years resident in Western Australia, currently transfixed by TV footage of London under heavy snow..)

I am sure you will all enjoy the current bar chart under Climate Timeseries Graph for Southern Hemisphere Annual Mean Surface Temperature, from the excellent website of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. It shows six years of very definite cooling trend, and a very notable longer term cyclical overprint.

The cyclical repetitions and 6 year downward progress of this chart have been intriguing and entertaining me for some time now and I cannot wait for the next bar to be added. (The related ones for Global and Northern Hemisphere show a more subdued signal, possibly due to the encroachment of industrialised microclimates on northern weather stations).

That is an excellent contribution by Frank Lansner. The fact that historical global temperature rise PRECEDES atmospheric CO2 rise in the Vostok Ice Core Data has always been the glaring error in the theory that anthropogenic CO2 emissions alone are driving global warming (and the appalling flaw in the Al Gore self-promotional video). And the potential that the Vostock graphs show for a catastrophic return to the more usual conditions of deep glaciation of this ‘Recent’ geological period has always been the resounding message that they convey. No wonder most of the Pleistocene biodiversity and megafauna were wiped out before we came along!

Whatever it is that has driven the global temperature variations shown in the Vostok ice core data, it certainly isn’t any of our doing, and it certainly hasn’t stopped. We should by all means stop man-made CO2 pollution. It is a horrid spike on an otherwise natural and rather pretty graph. But never imagine that we are controlling global temperature cycles by doing so. Something else is going on there, and it is much bigger than us and probably beyond our influence.

George E. Smith (11:09:07) : At Vostok Temperatures, the atmosphere has to be essentially devoid of water vapor or water in any form, and quite often it can be devoid of CO2 as well, with CO2 ice on the ground.

Well I believe you are right; it does look like that is nonsense (thanks for the phase diagram by the way). I will have to remember that next time I talk with the chap who told me he was walking around on CO2 snow at the south pole when he was there once making insolation measurements.

Robert Bateman (09:08:06) :
why the sunspots are getting lower in contrast?
Is it just weakening magnetic fields independent of Solar Cycle?
The physics is this: a lower magnetic field means that pressure balance must be achieved by a higher temperature. The contrast decreases as the temperature difference with the rest of the photosphere decreases.
Now, why the magnetic field should be lower, we don’t know. “”

That’s very interesting Leif. Is the magnetic field not just the effect of a rotating mass of plasma. I would think that a vortex of charged particles would constitute a circulating current and create a magnetic field that depended on the rotation rate. Is the magnetism some other effect ?

Just found some more giveaway NASA pics, thanks to Frank Lansner’s posts on his Danish forum. I’ve used all the NASA Antarctica pics in series, captioned “Warming Antarctica by Paintwork” so if anyone is still reading this thread, have fun – the composite is a stunner.

This is a wake up call. Few realize it. I hope that by the time it becomes obvious that the world is running out of CO2, either we’ve figured out how to liberate it en masse (which, despite claims regarding burning of carbon based fuels, is not yet realistic technology – the amount of liberation I refer to far exceeds anything possible presently). Or, we’ve left the Earth and started terraforming other places into new homes. Yes, I know these events are probably far in the future. But, the technology may take a long, long time to mature. Time’s a waisting.

I came across an article in Real Climate (http://realclimate.org/) on how we have already reached the tipping point of C02 warming effect titled
“Irreversible, Not Unstoppable” and was surprised to see a reference to this article here in WUWT which apparantly contradicted the RC article.

[Response: What’s to explain? The climate affects the carbon cycle – over ice age timescales it seems to be mainly through ocean processes (solubility, production, stratification) which takes time to work through. CO2 is still a greenhouse gas, and so the combination is an amplification of the cycles which are driven by orbital wobbles. None of this is controversial. – gavin]

You stated that we could use the formula T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C))-9.39 to analyse CO2’s forcing effect.
This was in support of Hansen’s having “nailed” it which in turn was in support of the IPCC’s selected model projection
which much of future policy is being based on.

From these graphs if we ignore extrema and only look at periods of monotonic increase then we have the situation of
CO2 increasing from roughly 220 ppm to 280 ppm a 60 ppm change and we have a temperature change from -6 to 1 or 7 K change in Temperature. (I’m looking at the graphs only so there could be some errors in my calcs but I’d be happy to redo them if you can point me to the raw data).

From your formula we get Delta(T) = T(280) – T(220) = 1.04. So according to you and Hansen 6 K or roughly 86% of that change was due to natural variation
even at what I think is an overly optimistic view of doubling CO2 causing a 3 degree rise in temperature.

The temperature-CO2 link is much weaker and besides the short term variation of about 3 ppmv/°C around the trend not responsible for the trend itself.

Richard Courtney:That assertion is factually incorrect. In fact, the anthropogenic emissions do not relate to the change to atmospheric CO2 concentation at all.

The year by year variability of CO2 increase speed has only a weak correlation with the emissions, simply because the noise caused by the influence of temperature on the sink speed is larger on a one-year scale than the influence of variations in human emissions (which are much smaller). That doesn’t say anything about the long-term influence of temperature or emissions on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. One need to compare the accumulated emissions and the longer term changes in temperature to the accumulation in the atmosphere, not the derivatives of them. If one does that, the above graphics show that the emissions give a near fit of the trend, without visible influence of temperature on longer term.

Since the world has maintained a broadly steady CO2 concentration for the last 20 million years (up and down a bit during ice age transitions and during periods in the Miocene), we’re in no danger of “running out of CO2”!

Proper treatment of data is the bedrock of good science. You need to describe your method for processing the data and provide statistics to validate the treatment you use.

I can superimpose any series of cyclical data, one cycle on top of the other, stretching and pulling them to fit, then iron out all the worst kinks and present them in a grand unified graph, which I then go on to monkey around with in ways that completely depart from the actual data I started with. But is it a scientifically sound thing to do?

The simplest treatments are most often the best.

What precisely you have done with these data is unclear, your reason for doing so is not established, your subsequent presentation is messy and your inferences are neccessarily contrived.

For those reasons, I would not even begin to try and explain your fig. 5.

And FYI, you know nothing about me or what side of the debate I sit on, all you know about me is that on the evidence of this article, I judge your expertise to be woefully lacking.

…..For precision, I should have said the rise has a steady and unwavering increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration which is independent of temperature of 0.4 per cent per year and is about 1.5 ppmv per year since measurement began at Mauna Loa in 1958.

That’s not true. And the issue isn’t “precision” but “accuracy”! One only needs to inspect the Mauna Loa record to see that. Here it is again:

Clearly if the rate of increase in the early part of the record was in the range 0.7-0.9 ppm/yr and it’s now averaging close to 2 ppm per year, one can hardly assert that “and is about 1.5 ppmv per year since measurement began at Mauna Loa in 1958”. After all if we’re interested in year on year (interannual) variability one may as well deal with the variability truthfully!

That main point was that the pH of the oceans is lowest in their most productive regions where upwellings of water from deep ocean occur, and this suggests the ocean pH is changing to alter the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

The scientific evidence indicates otherwise Richard. There’s a large scientific literature on this[***]. The interannual variability is ENSO-related and seems to be due largely to ENSO related changes in tropical forests (water-stressed and forest-fire prone during and shortly after El Nino’s and so suppressed “pull down” of CO2 from the atmosphere; growth-efficient during and shortly after la Nina events and therefore more efficient “draw down” of CO2 from the atmosphere).

I beg to differ, and I suggest that a more cogent – and certainly a much more comprehensive – “start” to reading the peer-reviewed literature on this is….

Not really….if one wants to understand scientific issues surely we should be addressing the science.

[***] A large amount of data indicates that interannual variability in CO2 uptake and release has only a small contribution from the oceans; e.g. :

My above post was definately not in support of the article n Real Climate. I wanted to point out Gavin’s response which I though was odd as he’s admitting that the long term forcings of the earth’s orbit (Milankovic cycle) is an overriding force when compared to CO2. Supporters of AGW rarely make such statements !

You accurately quote me as saying:
“That assertion is factually incorrect. In fact, the anthropogenic emissions do not relate to the change to atmospheric CO2 concentation at all.”

Then you say:
“The year by year variability of CO2 increase speed has only a weak correlation with the emissions, simply because the noise caused by the influence of temperature on the sink speed is larger on a one-year scale than the influence of variations in human emissions (which are much smaller). ”

No! That completely ignores the point that I have stated (twice) above when I wrote:

“Any two variables will seem to agree if they are given sufficient smoothing. As I said, the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year. Indeed, in some years the equivalent of almost all the anthropogenic emission stays in the air and in other years almost none. And I took the trouble to explain why annual data need not agree but smoothing over at most 3-years should. And I pointed out that IPCC use 5-year smoothing because 2-year, 3-year and 4-year smoothings fail to provide agreement between the anthropogenic emissions and the observed change to atmospheric CO2 concentation.”

My point is an empirical fact: i.e. the anthropogenic emissions do not relate to the change to atmospheric CO2 concentation.

apols for “butting in”. But in case Ferdinand is still in his cozy bed, we might as well establish two very straightforward points.

As I said, the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year. Indeed, in some years the equivalent of almost all the anthropogenic emission stays in the air and in other years almost none.

POINT ONE: In fact the “annual pulse” does relate to emissions. When emissions were low in the early part of the CO2 record, the CO2 increment was low (0.7-0.9 ppm/yr on average). Now that out emissions are higher, so the annual increment is much higher (averaging around 2 ppm/yr). Likewise Ferdinand’s linked plots [see Ferdinand Engelbeen (02:54:18)] show the straightforward relationship between emissions and accumulated atmospheric CO2.

POINT TWO: Yes, of course there is interannual variability that “piggybacks” on the rising anthropogenic trend. We know pretty well that this is largely the result of ENSO-related effects on tropical forest productivity. Sometimes this effect is large (especially shortly after strong El Nino’s and La Nina’s..)

My point is an empirical fact: i.e. the anthropogenic emissions do not relate to the change to atmospheric CO2 concentation.

A straightforward discussion of the nature and cause of interannual variability in CO2 accumulation isn’t “arm-waving”. Of course like any “noise” (random fluctuations about a trend) the origin of the noise may be fully identifiable. And it seems to be in this case. It’s ENSO-related effects, as just described. Presumably at some point we’ll fully understand the nature and origins of ENSO, and so the fluctuations won’t necessarily be “random” anymore! However it’s perfectly appropriate to describe not-cumulative variation of a parameter (CO2 increment) around a trend as “noise”, especially if we’re clear about what we’re discussing…

As I have repeatedly said above, there are two components to the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration: viz. the variation that is directly related to mean global temperature (i.e. Calder’s ‘CO2 thermometer’) and the steady rise of 0.4 per cent per year. As you say, Calder’s CO2 thermometer seems to be ENSO-related. Hence, it is the steady rise that we need to understand.

And, as I have repeatedly explained to you, that steady rise does not relate to the anthropogenic emission. It is an empirical fact that is does not not relate to the anthropogenic emission. Indeed, how could it when that rise is steady and the anthropogenic emission is very variable?

Furthermore, in response to my citing one of my peer reviewed publications on the subject, you wrote:
“Not really….if one wants to understand scientific issues surely we should be addressing the science.”
Bluntly, that is grossly offensive. If there is any flaw in our work then state the flaw.

You did not discuss our work in any way but, instead, you implied that our work is not “the science” and then cited other literature without any mention of its content or how it disputes our findings.

Ie., not variance at all? You know, Ferdinand, if you took as long to understand your counterpart’s argument as you do in composing your very long comments you might elicit the patience to read your blog.

Telling me that the size of a fluence is less important than the ending balance is “putting the cart before the horse”, jumping to the answer without doing the work.

foinavon, as EM Smith stated (way) above, you’re backward AFA the progression of the interglacial melting, at least for this current interglacial (and I’d bet for previous ones too).

The current interglacial started ~15k-10k yrs ago when the northern hemisphere had max sunlight during the summer — the southern hemi was then obviously in “min” summer warmth. This makes sense as most of the global glaciers were in the north & subject to summer melting.

Right now the north is in minimum summer warmth, and perhaps just on the “tipping point” for a new glaciation, judging from the pattern of the Vostok ice-cores.

George E. Smith (16:32:30) :Is the magnetic field not just the effect of a rotating mass of plasma.
Although [some] sunspots do rotate [slightly] , the magnetic field is not simply due to whirling charges. On the other hand, movements of solar plasma are responsible for formation [and later dispersion] of sunspots. That said, the simple question of how spots are formed and their magnetic field maintained has not yet found a satisfactory answer. Ken Schatten has some new ideas here http://www.leif.org/~leiforg/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf

The current interglacial started ~15k-10k yrs ago when the northern hemisphere had max sunlight during the summer — the southern hemi was then obviously in “min” summer warmth. This makes sense as most of the global glaciers were in the north & subject to summer melting.

Is this related to the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit such that at some times the north is closer to the sun during summer and the south then further away, and at other times the south is closer to the sun during its summer?

Congratulation Anthony for the winning scientific website. I try to post here for the first time, beg your indulgency.

Discussion on this thread is very fast for an old (70) retired French botanist formerly in an agronomic school. I have spent pastime for long on Excel with numbers from Petit e. a. and Barnolla to get and mind on Frank’s fig 1.

First minding on the temp curve, it is, as Courtney says for CO2, a smoothed curve also for Temp because each point represents the mean deuterium content for different length of time, due to stacking of the ice but also to height of snow precipitation for same time length. I obtain this proxy by subtracting from the age of each meter, the age of the succeeding, because at Vostok we have the mean age and mean deuterium content for each meter. Plotting this numbers give curbs everywhere (Vostok or GRIP …) which mimic almost exactly deuterium or 18O (Temp) ones, exept for stacking. Warm periods = few years/meter contrary to cold ones, whichever the periodicity, from ~30y to ~100ky. Variations are around 50y at 10ky BP and around 90 to 100y during the last glaciation. So temp data are smoothed but not equally along the core, and so, almost for me, difficult to detrend.

Second, for CO2, Vostok measurements are given for ~110 points for the last 140ky, where we have ~3310 points for ice age and deuterium content and the 110 CO2 data are not regularly but evenly picked (cherry?) on the core. I wonder why?

Each sample comprise 4 columns 1)data for depth in m, 2) ice age, 3) air age, and 4) CO2 content of air in ppmv. Differences between ice and air ages vary along the last 140ky of the core from ~2000y to ~6000y, younger for air. For getting deuterium deficit you must see the corresponding meter of the sample. To plot deuterium and CO2 one must attribute to each its proper mean age. So for D it is mean content of 1m, representing as we have seen 30-100 years.

For CO2 my former use is actually puzzled by Fd Englebeen reflections. I used to postulate that mean age of air covers age of all bubbles in the sample from the oldest, same age as ice, to the youngest, age of the last closing, when porosity is sealed. For instance, at 173.1m, ice age is 6828, air age 3634. The difference 3194y, being the lapse to bubbles mean age, correspond to a meter of ice at 105m which is the depth of mean air age so that IMHO the youngest bubbles were closed another 3194y later corresponding to the 20th meter under surface. If this reasoning is true, the mean age is for a portion of core about 152 m long and 6388y duration.

Two main statements could then be done: 1) for comparison with D content one must use the mean content upon the same portion of core, 152m, 6388y plotted at the same mean age of 3634y.
2) One cannot use data when 2xdifference between ice and air is upper than the surface, (greater than ice age of the sample) because all bubbles are not closed.

Could someone tell me where is my mistake?

For Frank, using this kind of plotting give overall graphs supporting his main observations for which he must be congratulated.

I have the impression that you don’t see the forest by the trees (if that is the right expression in English, in Dutch we have a similar expression). A shareholder is not very interested in the turnover of a factory (he should better do,…), but is mainly interested of what the gain or loss is at the end of a quarter or year.

For CO2 over a year we have a reasonable estimate of the emissions and a quite accurate measurement of the CO2 increase:

whatever the real height of the sources and sinks, the net result at the end of the year is:

natural sources – natural sinks = – 2 GtC/year

No matter if the sum of all natural sources over a year is 10, 100 or 1000 GtC, in all cases the sum of all natural sinks together is 2 GtC larger than all natural sources together. There is no need at all for any detailed knowledge of any individual flow within a year…

Conclusion: nature doesn’t add any net amount of mass to the atmosphere over a year, which is true for all years in the past 50 years.

Any two variables will seem to agree if they are given sufficient smoothing. As I said, the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year.

The accumulated emissions agree with the accumulation in the atmosphere without any smoothing as a near fit over 100+ years.

There is not the slightest reason for any process that in a mix of variables, one variable must show a direct correlation between cause and effect over a short period. That is a matter of noise to signal ratio. For the human CO2 signal, one need about 3 years to see it emerge out of the (temperature) noise, for d13C changes, one need about 8 years and for the trend of sea level one need over 25 years before one can conclude if the trend is up or down or flat, for a few mm change within several meters of tidal amplitude…

You are still in here Joel…..and I was waiting for that paper to back up your previous statements. Do I conclude you relinquish your statement?

I haven’t been able to track down where I read this. The basic idea, of course, is obvious: When the earth’s orbit becomes more elliptical, there will be large differences in solar radiation throughout the year but, averaged over the year, there will tend to be cancellation between the times when it is closer and the times when it is further away, so that the average amount of radiation received is pretty much the same as for the less elliptical case. The only question is how good this cancellation will be…i.e., is the total amount of radiative forcing unchanged to an accuracy of 5 W/m^2 (which could actually still result in a reasonably significant radiative forcing), 1 W/m^2 (which would be a pretty small perturbation relative to the other forcings like the albedo change although not completely insignificant, or only a fraction of a W/m^2 (which would make it pretty much insignificant). I thought I recalled that the answer was in the “insignificant” or at least “pretty small perturbation” category although this is what I have not been able to find an explicit reference for.

As I have repeatedly said above, there are two components to the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration: viz. the variation that is directly related to mean global temperature (i.e. Calder’s ‘CO2 thermometer’) and the steady rise of 0.4 per cent per year. As you say, Calder’s CO2 thermometer seems to be ENSO-related. Hence, it is the steady rise that we need to understand.

.

We understand the steady rise Richard…and it isn’t “0.4 per cent per year, btw, is it. One can understand this by inspecting the Mauna Loa record in the light of our emissions….

Ferdinand has illustrated the relationship between our emissions and the steady rise of atmospheric CO2:

see links here [Ferdinand Engelbeen (02:54:18)]

It’s pretty straightforward isn’t it? The steady rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age correlates rather well with our emissions, especially if one factors in the proportion (35-40%) of these that have been forced into the oceans. When our emissions have been low, the rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere has been low….conversely when our emissions have been highest (around now!) so has the rate of accumulation been highest. Otherwise the interannual variability is understood pretty well. It seems largely to be due to ENSO-related effects on tropical forest productivity…

There’s a truly vast amount of relevant research on this subject in the scientific literature. Since well-informed policymakers and their scientific advisors are sourcing their information from these sources, we’d be silly to ignore them! We’re likely to end up with viewpoints that (a) don’t accord with the evidence, and (b) be progressively out of kilter with informed decision-making…

Is this related to the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit such that at some times the north is closer to the sun during summer and the south then further away, and at other times the south is closer to the sun during its summer?
*******

Yes, this is orbital eccentricity which reverses the pole receiving the most summer sun every ~10k-15k yrs. Obviously, eccentricity alone doesn’t dominate the glacial cycles, but likely is a “trigger” when combined w/the other orbital changes.

I used to postulate that mean age of air covers age of all bubbles in the sample from the oldest, same age as ice, to the youngest, age of the last closing, when porosity is sealed.

As far as I have read in the excellent, detailed work of Etheridge:http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1996/95JD03410.shtml
The bubbles don’t start closing at the same age as the ice phase, but much later. In the case of the fast Law Dome ice cores, the bubbles were closing at about 72 m depth, where the ice is 40 years old, but the gas phase still is more or less in equilibrium with the atmosphere. The total closing period is about 8 years and the average gas age (compared to the surface) was about 10 years. That makes that the ice age – gas age difference is about 30 years, but independent of that, the average of the gas age in the bubbles is 8 years. In the case of Law Dome, the accumulation is very high (1.5 m ice equivalent per year), thus any sampling for CO2 measurements covers only ice from one year’s deposit, thus no more than 8 years average gas age.

For Vostok, with a few mm of ice equivalent per year, that makes that the gas age – ice age difference is much larger and more variable, dependent of colder (less snow) and warmer (more snow) periods. That also applies to the average smoothing of the bubbles and additional, with depth the layers are thinner and thinner, so that the same size of sample, necessary for the measurements, is the result of more years in average. But anyway a lot smaller than when you start the count from the ice age.

I have read somewhere that bubble closing at Vostok needs about 600 years, but I may be mistaken…

The steady rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age correlates rather well with our emissionssolar irradiance.

There. Fixed it for you. And:

There’s a truly vast amount of relevant research on this subject in the scientific literature. Since well-informed policymakers and their scientific advisors are sourcing their information from these sources Al Gore & the IPCC…

Fixed that one, too. Who are you trying to kid? This isn’t RealClimate, you know.

Leif keeps saying that the 1Watt decrease/increase at the beginning of the plot is not enough to explain the little ice age or the maunder minimum, but the correlation is there. So the irradiance may not be the direct cause and might be correlated with the direct cause, could be the magnetic fields or lack thereof affecting albedo, or some other cause not yet discovered. It is better correlated than the man induced CO2, though.

anna v (09:31:46) :Leif keeps saying that the 1Watt decrease/increase at the beginning of the plot is not enough to explain the little ice age or the maunder minimum, but the correlation is there.
Only in the very broadest of terms. The LIA began long before the Maunder Minimum and lasted long after. The number of degrees of freedom is very small [too small, IMHO] with such long period variations to make the correlation meaningful. If the correlation is there with minima, it should also show up with maxima. Solar activity was not markedly higher [some even talk about the Oort minimum at that time] during the MWP which also lasted centuries.

foinavon, as EM Smith stated (way) above, you’re backward AFA the progression of the interglacial melting, at least for this current interglacial (and I’d bet for previous ones too).

The current interglacial started ~15k-10k yrs ago when the northern hemisphere had max sunlight during the summer — the southern hemi was then obviously in “min” summer warmth. This makes sense as most of the global glaciers were in the north & subject to summer melting.

O.K. fair enough. I was referencing Stott et al (see below), who show a very close “averaged mean longitude spring insolation (21 August to 20 November) at 65°S insolation” compared to the “Dome Fuji ice core temperature deviation (Tsite) relative to the mean of the last 10 thousand years” (see Figure 3 of that paper). So the insolation changes in the Southern hemisphere Spring season match rather well with the temperature rise that occurred at the start of the deglaciation which is represented in Antarctic cores from around 20-18,000 years ago, and somewhat later in Greenland cores.

I don’t think these issues are tied down conclusively by any means. However the ice core data does indicate that warming in the S. hemisphere preceded warming in the N hemisphere during the interglacial and so the pattern of S. hemisphere variation in Spring insolation seems relevant.

The rise in Southern Ocean temperatures coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice and high-elevation glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere (36, 37). The explanation for the early warming in the Southern Hemisphere could involve increasing springtime solar insolation, which is well correlated with the retreat of sea ice and with the history of sea-salt accumulation in the Antarctic Dome C ice core (fig. S5). We suggest that the trigger for the initial deglacial warming around Antarctica was the change in solar insolation over the Southern Ocean during the austral spring that influenced the retreat of the sea ice (38). Retreating sea ice would have led to enhanced Ekman transport in the Southern Ocean and decreased stratification due to stronger air-sea fluxes.

The steady rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age correlates rather well with our emissions solar irradiance.

While I agree that solar irradiance and temperature correlate quite well over the past 400 years (since the Maunder Minimum), the change in CO2 between MWP and LIA is only 6 ppmv for about 0.8°C. The increase in temperature since then is about similar, thus solar/temperature is good for 6 ppmv of the 100 ppmv increase since 1850…

As Freeman Dyson repeatedly points out, microscopic biological activity has an enormous effect on atmospheric CO2 levels. Now it appears that biological activity in the oceans has a huge effect, too: click

And why wouldn’t microbiological activity in the oceans have a big effect on the atmosphere? There are more than a billion organisms in every square meter of the ocean’s surface in the top one meter alone. They are constantly taking in CO2 to build their shells, and the algae are emitting O2 as a waste product.

The ocean is alive, and it produces far, far more carbon dioxide than all human activity combined. Even the annual variation of ocean-produced CO2 is greater than the amount produced by humans.

[Fascinating article… but disregard the last sentence in the last paragraph. The author is clearly grant trolling.]

For those musing galactic influences, Science News 1/31/09 had an article regarding the mass of the Milky Way has been re-estimated to be 50% greater, from observations that put the spin rate ~15% greater than previously estimated. In poking around the web looking at related stuff, I found that NASA has redefined the layout of our galaxy from four major arms, to two major arms and two minor arms. Rotational rate may affect climatic timing (my supposition). Also the minor arms are mostly new stars, the major, a mix of old and new stars. This could affect the timing/density of extra-solar-system radiation getting to us when the solar wind is at a minimum (my supposition). The online link to the article is: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39709/title/This_just_in_Milky_Way_as_massive_as_3_trillion_suns
Old galaxy pic from MIT: http://i41.tinypic.com/6glqn5.jpg
New galaxy pic from NASA: http://i42.tinypic.com/24c9ybo.jpg

I cannot check your numbers of how much CO2 is coming from the heating oceans.
You are using what data to make the claim about MWP and LIA?

I presume one would use the chemical solubility versus temperature to get a lower bound?? I am surprised, as just the yearly variations at Mauna Loa are of such an order of magnitude. Maybe the proxies are off.

This small number would ignore the biological activity that increases with temperature .

What about the 800 year CO2 delay from the MWP? Maybe we are getting that, as somebody has observed here, which may be the reason you do not see much increase between MWP and LIA. CO2 from MWP started coming last century. Presumably then our next LIA and our present peak will have an equally small difference.

In looking at the glaciated and not time periods, and considering the minimum sealevel around maximum glaciation times, I wonder: What is the effect on vulcanism especially in and around the oceans between minimum sealevel and adding the weight of 350-400 feet of water onto the crust. I come up with about 5.8 X 10^8 Kg/m^2 (Using fresh water at 1gm/cm^3, seawater is heavier). Is sublimation greater or less at plate boundries? Is there a shift in heat released from volcanos and seamounts? What about the hot water vents?
Shifting to modern day perspectives, what is the effect on the El Nino/La Nina conoditions? Looking at the water temperature flow in time series of El Nino development and undersea hot spots, those waters flow east to west over a midocean volcanic ridge and seem to rise in an area surounded by hotspots. Does this affect the water temperature?

Please read more carefully what you give as “proof” of what you say: algues in the oceans use CO2, they don’t emit CO2, thus don’t add to the atmospheric increase. But as other ocean organisms use the algues as food, and transfer that back into CO2 and organic waste, it is the ultimate balance which is of interest. That is measured at different sites and a rough estimate is that about 6 GtC as organic carbon is sinking into the deep oceans. The interesting point is that this carbon has a low d13C level (organic…), thus leaving higher levels of d13C in the upper parts of the oceans.
See: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/Images/carbon_cycle_diagram.jpg

But how do we know how much CO2 the biosphere (ocean + vegetation + soil bacteria) produces or uses? Well indeed we have O2 as referee: if more O2 is used by fossil fuel burning than calculated, then more CO2 is produced than used by the biosphere and reverse if less O2 is used.

Well, since about 1990, the analytical accuracy of the O2/N2 ratio in the atmosphere is fine enough to measure what happens over the years. That shows that about 1.4 +/- 0.8 GtC/year is taken away by the biosphere. It is quite difficult to know how that is partitioned between oceans and land, but it simply proves that biological life as a whole is a sink for CO2, not a source.
See: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5462/2467

Thus while the seasonal exchange between oceans/vegetation and the atmosphere is huge, the net effect over a year is small, smaller than current human emissions…

The seasonal exchange between oceans and atmosphere is estimated at some 90 GtC/year, the seasonal exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere is about 50 GtC/year (see the link in the previous message). But these two are in countercurrent: higher temperatures give more CO2 outgassing from the oceans but more uptake by vegetation. If we take the seasonal changes over a the globe as base, then we see an average of about 10 GtC change per °C or 5 ppmv/°C. That is not only from the oceans, but the combined increase/decrease from oceans + biosphere. The variability at MLO is near double (+/- 4 ppmv), but that is for one hemisphere and the temperature variability in the NH is about double too.
More about ocean temperature/bioactivity can be read at the pages of Feeling e.a.:http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml

The 6 ppmv between MWP and LIA is what is seen in the Law Dome ice core, the one with a medium accumulation rate. The resolution is about 40 years average for the gas samples. As the LIA lasted a lot longer, that is not a problem.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
The Law Dome ice cores (all three) overlap with the south pole atmospheric measurements for a period of about 20 years, which gives confidence in their accuracy for measuring ancient atmospheres.

The temperature trend is taken from the reconstructions with the highest temperature difference between MWP and LIA (the smallest difference is by Mann’s reconstruction…), in this case Moberg and Esper. See the “spaghetty” graphs…

If there is an 800 years delay at all (which I doubt, there seems to be a 50 year delay between cooling and CO2 drop in the Law Dome ice core), the effect would be minimal: The 800 years delay during an increase from an ice age to an interglacial caused an increase of about 80 ppmv for an increase of about 10°C. Thus about 8 ppmv/°C. If the ratio stays the same for smaller increases/decreases, then the amount of CO2 coming out of the warmer MWP (after the “cold” period between the Roman Empire and the MWP), would give not more than 6 ppmv increase of CO2 in the current period…

Frank Lansner (10:54:02) :– You said that 20.000 years of zero solar activity would result in 0,05 temperature decrease.
How much of the maunder minimum do you expect that the low solar activity led to? Just roughly of course.
I do not understand your question. My answer [based on that non-understanding] would be “all of it”. The Maunder Minimum is the name given to a period of ‘zero’ solar activity. Or more precisely: to a period of few visible sunspots. The magnetic cycle was still operating [cosmic rays were still modulated].

Oh dear. There seems to be a correlation emerging between the posting of aggressive or offensivene comments and the assumption of contrived pseudonyms, behind which the offenders choose to hide. I had hoped that this otherwise excellent forum was above such cowardice.

In the Quaternary times, the eccentricity of the orbit of the earth varies between 0 and 0.07 with periods of 100 thousand years and 410 thousand years (Fig. 4.2-2a). When the eccentricity is larger, the global annual mean insolation is smaller, as if solar luminosity decreased. This effect, however, is merely of the order of one thousands of insolation itself, because it is proportional to the square of the eccentricity.

So, it appears that the direct radiative forcing due to the change in eccentricity should indeed be quite tiny. Again, it is the changes in distribution (in location and time of year) of the solar insolation that allows the growth or shrinkage of the ice sheets, which then (along with the change in greenhouse gas levels) creates a more significant radiative forcing through the ice albedo effect.

Smokey (10:08:57) :
There are more than a billion organisms in every square meter of the ocean’s surface in the top one meter alone. They are constantly taking in CO2 to build their shells, and the algae are emitting O2 as a waste product.

Not ‘constantly’, only about half of the time, the other half of the time the process is reversed.

Sorry, my mistake. You were talking about algues and in next sentence about more CO2 released from the oceans. I mixed them up. Nevertheless, algue indeed use CO2 and produce O2. Hard to know how that varies over the years. There are only two places on earth where a longer term trend is measured, Bermuda for the Atlantic and somewhere in the Pacific. A few years ago a lot of floating devices measure CO2 all over the oceans, as well in the atmosphere as in the ocean’s surface. The variability of the sink capacity of the oceans is quite high, about 50% of the average for the North Atlantic ocean, but still it is a sink for CO2, not a source, despite increasing sea surface temperatures (until a few years ago), which contradicts the formula of Frank Lansner that temperature is the cause of the rend in CO2. See:http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5602/2374

Oh dear. There seems to be a correlation emerging between the posting of aggressive or offensivene comments and the assumption of contrived pseudonyms, behind which the offenders choose to hide. I had hoped that this otherwise excellent forum was above such cowardice.

Cowardice and a Lack of actual evidence to support their position – kind of like being naked in the middle of the street – the ad-homs are an attempt to distract the observer from noticing the nakedness of their arguments.

Any good argument will be appropriately clothed in valid evidence with good providence.

Frank Lansner (10:54:02) :
“- You said that 20.000 years of zero solar activity would result in 0,05 temperature decrease.
How much of the maunder minimum do you expect that the low solar activity led to? Just roughly of course.”

Leif:
“I do not understand your question. My answer [based on that non-understanding] would be “all of it”. The Maunder Minimum is the name given to a period of ‘zero’ solar activity. Or more precisely: to a period of few visible sunspots. The magnetic cycle was still operating [cosmic rays were still modulated].”

As i understand you a minimum of sunspots would have the same effect in 50 years as it would in 20.000 years?

Hmm. I dont think so.
Lets take your 0,05 K. after roughly 1000years (APPROX) the whole ocean would have adjusted to that lower temperature.
But as the example was 20.000 years, well the minimum-sunspot-effect is still there and would roughly affect in the same way it did 1000 years earlier – that is resulting in a 0,05 K dive in temperatures.

But after the first 1000 years, this effect is now applied to a 0,05 colder eart, right?
ROUGHLY ROUGHLY we should see 20 times the effect after 20.000 years.
20 x 0,05 K = 1K.

And as the maunder minimum was a cooling of MANY times 0,05K the variance seen in ice ages is not really surpricing.

The essential: Whatever caused the big temperature changes we have seen “recently” – if this where allowed to proceed for 20.000 years, it would cool of the oceans in multible stages, and thus a 20.000 year cooling condition will have far bigger cooling potential than a 50 years cooling.

It’s pretty straightforward isn’t it? The steady rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age correlates rather well with our emissions, especially if one factors in the proportion (35-40%) of these that have been forced into the oceans. When our emissions have been low, the rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere has been low….conversely when our emissions have been highest (around now!) so has the rate of accumulation been highest. Otherwise the interannual variability is understood pretty well. It seems largely to be due to ENSO-related effects on tropical forest productivity…

There’s a truly vast amount of relevant research on this subject in the scientific literature. Since well-informed policymakers and their scientific advisors are sourcing their information from these sources, we’d be silly to ignore them! We’re likely to end up with viewpoints that (a) don’t accord with the evidence, and (b) be progressively out of kilter with informed decision-making…

A couple of things wrong with the above…

[1] How is the amount of Atmospheric CO2 baselined prior to the Industrial revolution. I.e. How do we actually know what the CO2 level was prior to 1850.

[2] Politicians are often advised by QANGOs “Quasi Autonomous Non Government Organisations” who are driven by their own political agendas and are not accountable – hardly a recipe for objective, independent, and skilled advice.

You stated that we could use the formula T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C))-9.39 to analyse CO2’s forcing effect.
This was in support of Hansen’s having “nailed” it which in turn was in support of the IPCC’s selected model projection
which much of future policy is being based on.

From these graphs if we ignore extrema and only look at periods of monotonic increase then we have the situation of
CO2 increasing from roughly 220 ppm to 280 ppm a 60 ppm change and we have a temperature change from -6 to 1 or 7 K change in Temperature. (I’m looking at the graphs only so there could be some errors in my calcs but I’d be happy to redo them if you can point me to the raw data).

From your formula we get Delta(T) = T(280) – T(220) = 1.04. So according to you and Hansen 6 K or roughly 86% of that change was due to natural variation…

sorry steve, I only just noticed your post.

The atmospheric CO2 variations between glacial and interglacial periods is pretty consistently between around 180 ppm (glacial) and 270 ppm (interglacial). That’s the case over the last three cycles. So within a 3 oC climate sensitivity, this gives a CO2-induced contribution to warming of near 1.8 oC. Since the global temperature rise from glacial to interglacial is 5-6 oC, the CO2 contribution (within a 3 oC climate sensitivity) is 30-36%.

I don’t see anything in Berger’s paper that contradicts what Masuda says. (Nothing I found there directly confirms it either although their description in the conclusions of “the positive feedback mechanisms which transform the
relatively small orbital forcing into global interglacial-glacial cycles” seems to support the general notion that the orbital forcing itself is small without the feedback mechanisms due to changes in albedo and greenhouse gas concentrations.) Berger is all about the insolation changes at various places over various times of year, not the global annual mean insolation.

I am also confused about which part of my argument (and that of Masuda) you disagree with. Do you not agree that when the orbit gets more eccentric there will be at least an approximate cancellation between the increase in insolation for the times when the earth is closer to the sun and the decrease when it is further away? Or, do you think that this approximate cancellation is not as good as Masuda says, i.e., do you think his claim that the remaining global mean annual insolation change goes as the square of the eccentricity is wrong? Or what exactly?

How is the amount of Atmospheric CO2 baselined prior to the Industrial revolution. I.e. How do we actually know what the CO2 level was prior to 1850.

We have ice cores, which show ancient atmospheres as they were inclused at the average time that the bubbles in the ice needed to be closed. For the medium accumulation ice core of Law Dome, that is about 40 years smoothing, sharp enough to see the change over half a century within the last millennium:
As there is an overlap of about 20 years with the atmospheric measurements at the south pole with the three ice cores at Law Dome (2 of 8 years resolution, one with 40 years), we can be confident that the air bubbles still have the same composition as in that period.

Further the d13C record of coralline sponges show that little change occured until about 1850, not a direct indication of amounts in the atmosphere, but a direct indication of the source of any change in CO2 amounts: not from the oceans, not from vegetation growth but either from vegetation decay or from fossil fuel burning. As the oxygen use figures show that since about 1990 there is more vegetation growth than decay, that means that the change is solely from human use of fossil fuels. See:

So within a 3 oC climate sensitivity, this gives a CO2-induced contribution to warming of near 1.8 oC

This is what the climate models expect, not what happens in reality… The 3°C for 2xCO2 is what Hansen needed to explain the warming during glacial-interglacial transitions, but that is just an estimate and hasn’t changed much since then.

But nobody knows e.g. what cloud cover did during such transitions, something that climate models don’t even approach in the real world of today. 1% change in cloud cover has about the same real effect as the theoretical effect of an increase of CO2 since the industrial revolution…

Further, there is no feedback effect visible of a drop of 40 ppmv CO2 at the end of the Eemian, the previous warm(er) period, neither any feedback of CO2 on temperature during the warming to the Holocene…

Frank Lansner (04:16:00) :But after the first 1000 years, this effect is now applied to a 0,05 colder eart, right?
ROUGHLY ROUGHLY we should see 20 times the effect after 20.000 years.
20 x 0,05 K = 1K.

And for a minimum lasting 20 million years, we should have a cooling of ROUGHLY 1000K, right?

There are a number of graphs (fig 2 & 4) showing the Wm-2 values at different latitudes. There is a significant change (40 Wm-2) in received solar energy across 100,000 years and if you look at the equatorial values it gives a mean value. There are many orbital aspects that effect solar output received, position of Sun relative to centre of ellipse, speed changes at closest point of ellipse etc, you might be wise to look at the data rather than postulate on what you think might happen.

Frank Lansner (15:51:06) :Leif, when i write “ROUGHLY ROUGHLY” it means that you should NOT take it littery , quantitatively(?!) Could I have written that more clear??
When you give numbers, like 1K, I suppose that should be taken seriously. And you were clear enough. Your argument is that after the first equilibrium is reached after 1000 years, the whole thing starts over again and we sink another 0.05K the next thousand years, and so on. Very clear, and very wrong. Once an equilibrium is reached, it stays where it is if the solar input stays where it is, no matter for how long.

And we do not need the whole ocean to come to equilibrium taking a thousand years. The surface layers warm up with little delay: the warm waters I swim in during the summer was not the result of warming a thousand years ago.

There are a number of graphs (fig 2 & 4) showing the Wm-2 values at different latitudes. There is a significant change (40 Wm-2) in received solar energy across 100,000 years and if you look at the equatorial values it gives a mean value.

Figure 2 shows mid-June insolation. That will obviously vary as the eccentricity changes and the axis of rotation precesses. Figure 4 at least shows enough data (i.e., insolation as a function of both time of year and latitude) to in principle get the result we want but to actually get the mean annual solar insolation would require doing an integration of the time of year and over the surface of the earth, which ain’t too easy to do in one’s head, especially from data on a contour plot. Already, however, you can see the basic cancellation effects at work: the top two figures show a larger variation of insolation over time and location while the bottom show a smaller variation but you can see that the variations are such that a substantial cancellation will occur in regards to the mean value.

There are many orbital aspects that effect solar output received, position of Sun relative to centre of ellipse, speed changes at closest point of ellipse etc, you might be wise to look at the data rather than postulate on what you think might happen.

Well, first of all, that isn’t really data. It’s a calculation. Second of all, you can’t get the number that I am talking about from those plots. And, third of all, I have already thought roughly about the effects of position and speed changes. For example, because of the 1/r^2 law, the average radiation of an earth that spent half its time at a distance of (5/4)r from the sun and half its time at a distance of (3/4)r from the sun is actually larger than if it spent all of its time at a distance r. However, because the earth will have a higher velocity when it is closer to the sun (and, even moreso, a higher angular velocity), it will spend less of its time at close to the sun than further away. So, these two effects will come in with opposite signs and at least partly cancel.

I admit that I haven’t actually shown you that the annual mean insolation changes very little but I have provided a reference that states this without proof and have provided you with plausibility arguments of how such cancellations will occur when you consider the annual mean solar insolation over the whole earth. All that you have provided me is evidence that shows what nobody is contesting which is that the Milankovitch oscillations cause significant changes in the distribution of solar insolation on the earth (in both location and time of year) and you somehow seem to think that these prove your point, which they don’t whatsoever.

Sorry, I should refer to the quantity that I am talking about as the “global annual mean insolation” as Masuda correctly does. (In the above, I used “annual mean insolation” because I thought “mean” in that context meant averaging over location but it seems to be used in the literature to mean just averaging over time so people talk about the “annual mean insolation” at a certain location or latitude. Urgh!!)

Leif tell me about it. Wallowa Lake is one very cold body of water! Only the top 5 to 6 inches warms up during the summer, unless you are at the shallow end and you don’t go past your knees. BUT, it is a very good lake to learn to ski in. You REALLY do NOT want to fall IN!

@Leif:
If the deeper layers are warm it will result in higher temperatures of the upper layers of water and vice versa. So what you see after just 50 years is not only an equilibrium with the new sun-condition, its also an equilibrium with deeper waters. As these will warm over thousands of years, the “buffer from downunder” will keep changing until the REAL equilibrium is reached.

To think that 50 years of a temperature influence wil result in the same warming as 20.000 of a temperature influence is hardly 100% correct.

– But i agree, Leif, the deep ocean temperature is of NO consequence when speaking in centuries etc, has no consequense for “global warming” development in the present century. And yes of course its not 20 * 0,05 K = 1K, that line was 100% to make you understand my point, nothing else.

Frank Lansner (00:57:12) :To think that 50 years of a temperature influence wil result in the same warming as 20.000 of a temperature influence is hardly 100% correct.
If there is an error here, it is in thinking that the 0.05K cooling will be achieved over 50 years. It will be achieved over 20,000.

And yes of course its not 20 * 0,05 K = 1K, that line was 100% to make you understand my point, nothing else.
I fail to see how an incorrect line can make me see a correct point.

“If the deeper layers are warm it will result in higher temperatures of the upper layers of water and vice versa.”

Yes but cooling at the ocean surface takes a long time to influence the whole water coumn so that the upper layers stay cool.

As changes in the Earth’s orbital configuration etc. signal warming, sea water begins to store heat – AND – because warm sea water is less dense than cold sea water, the warm water floats on the surface and is available to circulating air masses /// allowing temperature increases to feed on heat in the ocean surface layers to produce rapid warming.

As changes in the Earth’s orbital configuration etc. signal cooling, sea water begins to cool — AND – because cold sea water is more dense than warm sea water, the cold water sinks below the previously warmed water mass so that the circulating air masses are picking up stored heat /// and this stored heat continues to feed the atmosphere for 10s of thousands of years until cold sea water finally remains perched on cold sea water.

Carrying on with the phenomenon of warm (lighter) sea water floating on cold (denser) sea water as global warming proceeds – AND – cooled (denser) water sinking below previously warmed water as global cooling proceeds, we have an explanation for the slowness with which atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop during cooling.

The high atmospheric CO2 levels, left over from the interglacial period, do not have access to the cooled water and its ability to absorb more of the gas than warm water because the cooled water quickly sinks and is unaccessible to the circulating atmosphere. The ocean surface that is in contact with the circulating atmosphere does not fully reflect the cooling that has taken place until the entire water column has cooled so that there is cold water — capable of disolving large amounts of CO2 — readily available to the circulating atmosphere.

1. Never confuse lab results with nature. Richard Feynman said that the physics we know is the simple part; natural physics in the real world is far too simple for [15] blind generalization.2. In real science we never label a speculative idea to be true by fiat. Ordinary scientists would lose their reputations simply by mislabeling a wild hypothesis as the truth. They would be isolated like a cyst in the human body, blocked from spreading the infection.3. In real science the burden of proof is always on the proposer, never on the skeptics.4. In real science ‘data surrogates” are never accepted without long-term testing.
Until a decade or two ago we didn’t have satellites to measure global temperatures. Before that time we had to rely on very spotty and locally distorted surface thermometers, or even worse, ice core surrogates for real world temperatures. But those core samples take decades of testing and open debate before we know what they really measure. It took centuries for the mercury thermometer to be adopted. Can we really believe the story that ice cores and tree cores tell us the truth about global temperatures eons ago? I don’t know, but in a toxified field of research, I don’t trust it.5. In real science we never smuggle untested premises into the words we use.
The very term “greenhouse gas” is an unproven assumption. Don’t even use it unless you are prepared to prove that C02 and methane actually raise world temperatures. So far the evidence doesn’t look good.6. In real science we never corrupt the integrity of research by slanting grants toward any preconceived idea. Nor do we allow ourselves to be rushed into making huge claims without adequate testing and debate. Political deadlines mean nothing in real science.7. In the real world, much less real science, we never, never believe politicians when they claim to know a scientific truth; they are unqualified, and they are professional liars.
Al Gore is a sick joke. The same can be said about the establishment media, and yes, even about scientist-politicians.
Scientists are as corruptible as anybody else. Good scientists do have a conscience, but it’s the double-checking mechanisms of science that makes it trustworthy. We routinely see corrupt accountants and clergy in the news, and the news business itself is deeply corrupted and untrustworthy. The question is, do you build in checks and balances? Reporters are always rushed and deadline-driven, and they always trade off their integrity against the daily pressure for headlines.
All this affects you personally. Don’t doubt that your life and mine depend upon healthy science and medicine, and yes, even on honest journalism.8. Finally, in real science we never confuse an infant research effort with a mature science that has been checked and triple-checked over decades.
Climate modeling is just a toddler science, barely able to waddle around the living room. It’s a nice idea to try modeling the earth’s atmosphere. But nature is inconceivably more complex than what we ever see in a laboratory jar. There are no proven “greenhouse gases” in the real atmosphere, just as there are no proven causes of alcoholism or obesity. Alcoholism is an incredibly complex mix of nutrients, heredity, epigenetics, exercise, lifestyle, early learning, puberty, social support, economics, food availability, optimism, toxins, sunshine, interactions, feedback loops, and all the unknown unknowns.

And, if one really checks out the meaning of these ratios, do they not merely
reflect the NUMBER OF TROPICAL COSTAL THUNDERSTORMS…and not truely represent temperature?

Atmospheric energy, granted. Tropospheric temperature? I have had, and continued to have my doubts on this.

Just as the concept of “average temperature” has a “confused units” problem. (I.e., temperature is an INTENSIVE variable, not an EXTENSIVE variable.) So too do almost all the ice core studies, in that the “proxy” probably proves nothing about “temperature” per see, but does give us some idea of atmospheric energy.

Richard. Im constantly refreshing my online bank account waiting for some oil money to appear. What´s taking the oil companyies so long?? Did i really write these articles and then no oil money??

I have read all these super nice writings, thanks. Often i see a quite nuanced picture, the more blog entries the more muddy, complex things normaly become.

But not here. I havent seen ONE comment here who seriously explains how CO2 could be the important temperature driver in connection with fig 4 and 5. Funny thing is, “the whole world” is watching this blog. If no one here, not even Hinge, Flanagan or Ebgelbeen etc. can show anything really wrong… who can?

I hope one day soon that we see a CO2 theory no longer walking on water.
I hope we can all enjoy science again. Just enjoy what comes from Nasa´s Mars missions, From hubble. I hope things will be like i the good old days, when science was about exploring the universe. It was SO nice, those where the days :-)

nick warren (09:02:47) : I am confused, in figure 2 is temp pulling CO2 up or is CO2 pushing temp up? What was the volcantic activity during these periods, and how many cows were on earth?

Temperature goes up first, then CO2 follows. It is believed that the warmer temperatures drives CO2 from the oceans. Then temperatures drop and the CO2 drops, going back into colder water.

Over these long periods of time there will have been many volcanoes. They cause some of the short term bumps and dips, but no long term trends.

Cows? A relatively recent domestication. There were few cows until very recently (about 30,000 years) before that their ancestors were wild oxen. The cows make no difference until very recently, and maybe even not then.

[OK, that Lone Ranger quote dates me as an old fart. If being sixty is old…]

And thanx Frank Lansner for a fascinating article, which has generated a great number of interesting comments. One of Anthony’s great strengths is including articles by common-sense engineers in addition to the theorizing of university based PhDs and scientific bodies, whose leadership presumes to speak for all of their rank and file members.

Engineers are the people who actually make things happen and solve problems in the real world. IMHO they should be given equal weighting with theoretical speculation concerning CO2 and temperatures. And both engineers and university professors should trump politically appointed bodies like the UN/IPCC and perpetually grant seeking government employees in the climate sciences, like the UK’s Met office, the NOAA, GISS, etc.

As you may have noticed, I do support this story, simply because there is no measurable influence of CO2 on temperature visible in the ice cores, which should be the case if CO2 was an important driver for temperature (according to climate models, some 40% of the temperatuer change is due to CO2 as “feedback”). Not in the Vostok ice core or any other ice core. See the references I did give at 07:56:35, February 1st…

Where we differ in opinion is the cause of the recent rise in CO2: temperature (but then the ice core record must be wrong) or emissions (and then the ice core record still is right). In the latter case, temperature variations only cause the variability around the trend, not the current trend itself…

Humans and animals just use food/feed which contains CO2 which was captured some months to years before from the same atmosphere where it returns by exhaling. Averaged over a decade or so, this doesn’t add or extract CO2 to/from the atmosphere. Fossil fuels were stored for millions of years, thus add to the current atmosphere, while they were extracted from the ancient atmosphere (when CO2 levels were sky high)…

Cows, sheep, goats,… are somewhat different as their stomach uses bacteria to break down cellulose (which humans and most animals can’t), with as byproduct relative much methane. Methane is a much more potent GHG than CO2 – molecule by molecule – but is broken down quite rapidely in the atmosphere by ozone and OH radicals (half life of about 10 years). Current levels of methane in the atmosphere are quite stable since about a decade, thus despite China eating more meat nowadays (and planting more rice, another important source of CH4), there is little to worry about methane from animal breeding.

Good old Engelbeen:
You write: “Where we differ in opinion is the cause of the recent rise in CO2”.

– The thing is, Ebgelbeen, that IF what im saying in this article is correct , then we have the period going back 1/2 mio years NOT supporting CO2 as a catastrophical temperature driver. We already had data going back 500 mio years showing the same. So the foundation to believe that CO2 is dangerously drinving temperature is… well…. gone?

And on this basis, the discussion about what causes CO2 rise is no longer that relevant… is doesnt matter quite as much what causes CO2 if CO2 is not really a problem. Only for scientific purposes! But the CO2 considderations are no longer important to the climate debate, it appears.

Yes, its a little provocative to say so… but… Whats keeping CO2 important in the climate debate, really?

I fully agree, the theoretical increase in temperature (based on IR absorption lines) is about 0.85 K, with water vapour feedback 1.2 K. The rest of the “positive” feedbacks is pure speculation, like clouds which no climate model can predict as observed, and probably are a negative feedback…

But some sceptics think that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is not man-made, only because that is another pilar of AGW: if the increase is not man-made (or there were larger variations in the past), then the effect of 2xCO2 doesn’t matter, as only nature is to blame…

For me the discussion still is relevant: One need to be as critical for what is said by sceptics as by AGW people: science should give the right answers, even if one doesn’t like the result…

Frank Lansner (13:42:09) :
But not here. I havent seen ONE comment here who seriously explains how CO2 could be the important temperature driver in connection with fig 4 and 5. Funny thing is, “the whole world” is watching this blog. If no one here,[…]can show anything really wrong… who can?

Frank, you’ve hit on it. On another thread I pointed out the utility that the Warmers bring to the debate: It comes from when they say nothing or obfuscate with empty words, deflecting with distractions, but no substance.

Watch for that ‘negative space’ of their arguments and postings. The emptiness. That tells you where the gold is. You, sir, have struck gold.

I hope things will be like i the good old days, when science was about exploring the universe. It was SO nice, those where the days :-)

And they will be again. I give it a decade at the most before nature puts the lie to AGW and the world moves on to the next fad. PDO has flipped. Sun is quiet. Arctic and Antarctic air is very cold. Cold water is upwelling from he deep oceans. I would not be surprised to even see CO2 levels drop as more is sucked out in cold water and ice… Aren’t inflection points fun!

My comment about cows was only to show to Nick Warren that in the long term of the geologic time scale used here, cows are a blip at the end…

I agree fully with the notion that cows (and people and chickens and…) are just cogs in the: air to plants to animals to air cycle.

Fossil fuels were stored for millions of years, thus add to the current atmosphere, while they were extracted from the ancient atmosphere (when CO2 levels were sky high)…

This is a bit simplistic. Most of the ‘sky high’ CO2 ended up in limestone, not oil or coal. What CO2 we produce each year is a small percentage of what nature produces.

It is also the case that much of the coal and oil is not sequestered!

Tar sands, oil shales and coal erode into the environment. Oil seeps naturally (still doing it off Santa Barbara!). Natural gas out gasses from clathrates. Nature is busy recycling those materials right now. At most we can speed up the process by about 1/3. (about 2/3 of carbon stays in the ground in the most extreme recovery we know how to do, continuing to await erosion). And nature is also busy burying more carbon in deep ocean sediments. (To be subducted and emitted from volcanoes or to form future gas deposits…)

We can’t change the outcome, and we can only influence the rate a little bit.

Cows, sheep, goats,… are somewhat different as their stomach uses bacteria to break down cellulose (which humans and most animals can’t),

The category you are looking for is ‘ruminant’ animals. BTW, rabbits are considered a ‘small ruminant’! Though of the ‘hindgut’ type not the ‘foregut’ type as with cows, sheep and goats.

with as byproduct relative much methane.

As is the case with non-ruminants, such as us. Just eat a big bowl of beans and you will see that you have methanogenic bacteria as well! And I won’t go into what happens at the wrong end of a pig (another non-ruminant)… BTW, when elephants ‘vent’ it’s a wopper! And they ‘vent’ a lot!

FWIW, the largest single source of animal methane is termites. Yup. All the domestic animals in the world are nothing compared to the termites. Now just how are we to plug up all those wee little termite bottoms to stop all those little termites from ‘venting’?

despite China eating more meat nowadays (and planting more rice, another important source of CH4), there is little to worry about methane from animal breeding.

I agree completely. In fact, even if no animals were involved, all sorts of decay organisms break down all that cellulose into CO2 and methane. Thus ‘swamp gas’… Remove every large animal on the planet and methane will still be made from the plants.

I know it’s hard for Warmers to accept but: We are just not relevant.

The only place where ‘cows vs. non-cows’ has an impact is something called ‘feed conversion ratio’. If I have 10 kg of corn, I can make 10 kg of tortillas (actually more, because water is added to process, but lets ignore the water) or I can cook it to about 40+ kg of cooked grits or polenta. If I feed it to a cow, I get about 1 kg of beef (that has about 250 gm of dry solids at most).

This only matters to the extent that I don’t have enough food for everyone to eat. Once everyone is fed a basic grain & greens diet, turning all the rest into cows and pigs is quite reasonable. It’s really just a matter of saying “I have an extra 10 kg of corn, do I want 40 kg of polenta or 1 kg of beef?”

How can fish do that? They are cold blooded with small bone mass. Most of the feed goes to meat. The feed is ‘dry’ but the fish is ‘wet’ and this hides the actual dry mass ratio of closer to 4 : 1 In some farmed fish operations, the fish also eat algae growing in the pond, so the ‘fish poo’ ends up being recycled via sunlight and you get fraction:1 (while absorbing CO2 ! )

Want to solve world hunger? Teach folks to make fish ponds and farm fish. Swap that burger for a bucket of fried chicken…

Yes, I’m saying that the only kind of ‘self denial’ needed is to force yourself to enjoy fried chicken and a mess ‘o catfish … (and even that probably isn’t needed, since there’s more food than the world needs right now. It just isn’t distributed well.)

Oh, and I’m not saying to get rid of cows and goats. They ought to be fed the ‘silage’ (leaves and stems) of things like corn. This ‘grass and silage’ fed meat and milk is enhancing total food production, not reducing it. That’s what ruminants in the agronomy system are all about…

Does any of this mean a thing to global CO2, Methane, and ‘warming’? Not a chance… As I said before: We are just not relevant. Far less important than even wee little termite farts…

One wonders, where and how were you educated? Did you not study logic and fallacies?

This is a bit simplistic. Most of the ’sky high’ CO2 ended up in limestone, not oil or coal. What CO2 we produce each year is a small percentage of what nature produces.

Talk about simplistic. You well know, and don’t claim you don’t, the issue is balance and pace of change. The natural cycle sans human input has been roughly in balance. When any system is in balance, or nearly so, it requires very little extra forcing to send it out of balance. So, while you play childish word games, I will set the record straight: Overall, about 1% of the gases affecting climate and temperature are those that affect that overall balance. Of those gases that are forcing things above and beyond the relative balance of the natural system, CO2 is 40% of those.

These are not trivial numbers, quite unlike your ill-informed and/or illogical and/or intentionally and maliciously misleading presentation of the “facts.”

I ask you, if there is doubt about AGW, where is the science? Quit posting your opinion. It means nothing. WHERE IS YOUR SCIENCE?

FACT: 90% of all anti-AGW books are written by people with ties to conservative, political think tanks and/or groups.

FACT: the anti-AGW machine was funded almost exclusively by Exxon, for which Exxon should be prosecuted under international law for crimes against humanity.

FACT: The BuCheney administration actively suppressed climate research, for which BuCheney should be prosecuted under international law for crimes against humanity.

It is also the case that much of the coal and oil is not sequestered!

Not anymore. Much? Do you understand the word? “A tiny percentage” is the term you are looking for in terms of natural emissions. However, you are correct in your statement when anthropogenic use of FF is considered. About 50% of the oil that is reachable has been pumped out of the ground.

Tar sands, oil shales and coal erode into the environment.

Uh-huh. At what rate? Are you seriously trying t claim that the burning of about half of the recoverable oil by humans is equivalent to the miniscule amounts that are being emitted naturally?

You are so dishonest. Shame on you.

At most we can speed up the process by about 1/3. (about 2/3 of carbon stays in the ground

Ah, more dishonesty. The rate of extraction should never be measured against the total carbon in the planetary/atmospheric system. It must logically be measured in terms of what actually gets emitted in the time frames we are dealing with: tens and hundreds of years. You are attempting to say something like, how much water we use is irrelevant because so much more gets used as rain and runoff. This is a stupid argument.

And the key is the SPEED or RATE of emissions. Natural emissions happen very, very slowly over geological time in most cases. Methane is one of the exceptions in the climatic record. However, when it comes to oil and coal, there is no instance in history of a rapid emitting of either. So, the rate of emission for both naturally has got to be somewhere in the thousandths – millionths of a percent compared to emissions caused by the use of FF by humans.

Your argument is beyond ridiculous.

We can’t change the outcome, and we can only influence the rate a little bit.

Correct. The use of the present and future is accurate. That is because we have already done so.

with as byproduct relative much methane… Just eat a big bowl of beans… wrong end of a pig (another non-ruminant)… elephants ‘vent’..

FWIW, the largest single source of animal methane is termites. Yup. All the domestic animals in the world are nothing compared to the termites. Now just how are we to plug up all those wee little termite bottoms to stop all those little termites from ‘venting’?

Tell us, who domesticated the animals so that the biomass of cows and humans now exceeds the biomass of virtually any other animal? Those emissions, too, are anthropogenic forcings.

Termites? Whose homes are they eating? How many termites would there be less human habitations?

I know it’s hard for Warmers to accept but: We are just not relevant.

Truer words. You are not relevant. You are a dishonest, illogical being.

REPLY: At least Mr. Smith is “relevant” enough to use his real name when stating an opinion, “”ccpo”. I see at your blog you have a collection of “asdf” gobbledygook under “how to make the best use of this blog”. TCO I presume? Please don’t make ad hom attacks on people you disagree with here.
– Anthony

Very basic logical misunderstanding on your part. You are describing a metastable system.

When any system is in balance, or nearly so, it requires very little extra forcing to send it out of balance.

You are describing a metastable system.

To say that the sky is falling you have to prove that it is in a metastable state.

Think of half an egg shell. If it is set on the table on the wide end, it is in a stable state. If it is balanced on its tip, it is in a metastable state and a small nudge can roll it over.

The basic skeptic premise is that there is no inkling of a proof that the earth as a whole, as we know it now, is in a metastable state.

Termites? Whose homes are they eating? How many termites would there be less human habitations?

How can you be so anthropocentric? Cockroaches and termites thrive everywhere, man and his houses are a blip on their screen.

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/brockberg.html
“Termites prefer the absence of solar radiation; an immobile atmosphere; saturated or near saturated relative humidities; high, stable temperatures; and even elevated levels of CO2. Although termite populations are active in the middle latitude environments, the vast concentrations of mounds and nests are found in the lower latitude tropical forests, grasslands, and savannahs of Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. It is estimated that these regions contribute approximately 80% of global termite emissions.”

– As the ice cores reveal, there is a metastable equilibrium at work at the pre-industrial CO2 level, which can be swithched to the cold side if we have the right solar/earth conditions. Why we have this only since a few million years, is probably a matter of configuration of the continents: huge land masses at one of the poles (good for piling up a lot of ice) and the hindering of ocean currents by the closing of the Panama isthmus. But there still is a lot of discussion on this.

– At each of the two states, the equilibrium is rather stable around a minimum and maximum temperature. Much higher temperature (and CO2) levels in the far past didn’t cause a catastrophic further warming.

– Any change in temperature is followed by a limited change in CO2 level. For the current variability, that causes about 3 ppmv/°C with a lag of one to a few months around the trend. For the MWP-LIA cooling that was about 8 ppmv/°C with a lag of about 50 years. For the 420,000 years covered by the Vostok ice core, it also is 8 ppmv/°C with a lag of about 800 years for upgoing temperatures and several thousands of year for downgoing temperatures.

– There is no physical evidence that CO2 has any effect on temperature in the ice cores, while this should be visible, if CO2 would be helping for about 40% of the warming / cooling. That doesn’t prove that CO2 has no effect at all, but it proves that the effect is small, substantially smaller than the 3°C/2xCO2 as most climate models show.

– There was a quite stable, surprisingly linear correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, including short term and long term changes in vegetation, (deep) ocean flows etc. This short time correlation is broken since the industrial revolution, which show increasing CO2 levels beyond what can be expected from temperature changes in ice cores, firn and direct measurements.

– The ice cores also show that the short time correlation between absolute temperature and CO2 levels as debated in the other thread (the CO2-temperature link) is spurious: CO2 levels change with changes in temperature, not with long standing temperature levels themselves. That there is a correlation in the past decades is mainly caused by a simultaneous increase of CO2, temperature and the relative huge year by year temperature variations…

– Humans are the cause of the rise of CO2 since the industrial revolution (and methane levels since they invented rice cultivation), because they add more CO2 than nature (oceans and biosphere) can absorb over a year, thus pushing the dynamic equilibrium to higher levels.

Conclusion:
Although humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 (and CH4), the effect of this on temperature is limited and to a certain extent even beneficial.
There are other reasons to limit our use of fossil fuels, but global warming is not one of them…

Ok, I just did a very simplistic “dry lab” calculation which does show that with high ratios of HCO3 to H2CO3, addition of H2CO3/dissolved CO2 which adds more HCO3 net than H2CO3 to the solution does decrease CO3.

Gavin Schmidt
– is commenting on the article “CO2, temperature and ice ages” In this blog of Realclimate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/langswitch_lang/en
He writes:
“The climate affects the carbon cycle – over ice age timescales it seems to be mainly through ocean processes (solubility, production, stratification) which takes time to work through. CO2 is still a greenhouse gas, and so the combination is an amplification of the cycles which are driven by orbital wobbles. None of this is controversial.”

So, Gavin does not in any way distance the illustrations of vostok data I’ve shown.
So far so good. As I wrote in the article, the illustrations does not make a CO2 effect 100% impossible.

1) They just show that the CO2 effect is so small, that even a CO2 in max cannot prevent temperatures from falling all the way down. This shows that CO2 is at most i quite little player.

2) Data indicates, that maybe, and just MAYBE, its CO2 that makes temperatures fall 0,1 K per century slower than they rise?

3) And literally, I don’t think Gavin from fig 4 and 5 can make CO2 “amplify” the temperature falls? It must be an amplifying effect working only when temperature is rising.

No worry. After that a several of my postings never appeared at RealClimate, I don’t post there anymore. They censore anything and anybody they don’t like. That makes a real scientific debate impossible…

Posting an article on Anthony’s blog is a good reason to put you on on their blacklist…